


What it Means to Lose Control

by WallofIllusion



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Bondage, F/M, Psychological Drama, Sado-Masochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-18
Updated: 2011-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-19 13:52:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 24,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/201586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WallofIllusion/pseuds/WallofIllusion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Stein has to give up control in order to fight, some are more than willing to step in and claim it from him. Predominantly MedusaxStein, but focuses on Stein and his interactions with others in general.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Loss

It did not take Marie long to realize that she had made two serious misjudgments.

The first: that Stein’s anxiety, obvious as they’d made their way towards the witch’s lab, stemmed from unease or fear or anything negative. Marie had realized _that_ mistake the second he’d first locked eyes with Medusa; his mouth had twisted into a cruel, scornful smile, and it had dawned on Marie that he liked Medusa, enjoyed her company, enjoyed the act of trying to kill her despite the risk of being hurt in return. The two bantered wickedly back and forth, and they might as well have been flirting.

The second misjudgment was one they had shared: that this fight would be, if not easy, manageable. It had started badly—they had intended to launch some kind of surprise attack, but instead Medusa had been the one to attack from the shadows, long before they’d even gotten to her lab—and it hadn’t improved since. Even using Izuna, they weren’t doing any serious damage, and it was clear that Medusa was toying with them. Her smile kept growing wider and wider, while Stein’s grew more and more uneasy.

Suddenly, though, Stein stopped. His grip tightened, and flowing through their resonance link Marie could feel fear and resignation. He stood unnaturally still. Marie sent an extra push of electricity through his nerves, silently begging him to move. She could feel his thoughts and what he wanted to ask of her, and she did not want to be asked.

“Marie…” he muttered.

“No, Stein, please.”

“I can’t beat her like this.”

Marie glanced over at Medusa. The witch was at ease, sitting in mid-air by use of her tail and wearing a wicked smile. “Look at her. She’s waiting for you to do this. She has to be planning something—”

“Unlikely. She simply likes it when I’m insane.” His grip shifted, fidgeted. He wouldn’t look at her. “Marie, we need to do this. Your mind won’t be in any danger. I just need you to hold onto me and give me a way to come back.”

“I will not.”

“Yes, you will,” Stein said, “because you can’t force me to stop, and if I let the madness take me, you’ll make sure it doesn’t take all of me. It’s how you are.”

He was horribly right. “Stein, please…”

“Are you ready?” His voice was impassive. He wasn’t giving her a choice.

So she sighed and very quietly said, “Yes.”

At first, all that happened was that his focus intensified and his heart began to race. But then Marie realized that he was no longer thinking in discrete thoughts; they were all run together with an urge, a _lust_ to hurt and pick apart and destroy. She felt the flow of her electricity change. He had been tense before, holding something back, and now it was unfettered and trying to rip away and escape everything, escape _her_.

Stein panted for a moment, and then his face spread in a slow grin as he became accustomed to the feeling. He gave a high-pitched giggle. There was terror in it, and it was that terror that clung to her as the rest of his mind stretched as far as possible in the opposite direction. He was enjoying this.

It started.

Even Marie was startled at how fast Stein moved. She felt herself strike the back of Medusa’s head before the witch had even realized that they were behind her; then Stein was in front of her again, swinging his palm into her gut. But before he could use his Soul Menace, she had propelled herself backwards with a Vector Plate, then forwards again with a second one. Stein dodged her charge easily and laughed.

“Can’t keep up?”

“Hmph.” Medusa narrowed her eyes, her smile not fading. She was motionless for a moment, thinking, and then all at once: “Vector Arrows!”

The arrows rushed at Stein, but he did not move until the last possible second; then he dashed forward, unnaturally, _ridiculously_ fast, and caught her just under the ribcage.

“Soul Menace!”

The witch was blasted backwards, but Stein was already at the far end of her trajectory, and Marie struck her in the small of the back—not that Marie was aware of anything other than the sense of collision until half a second later. This was too much. They were moving too fast. He was dragging her along with him no matter how hard she pulled back and she felt like she couldn’t breathe, like he was draining blood from her veins. If he kept this up she would damage his nerves, and he _had_ to know this, but he was taking from her uncaringly. She had no hope of controlling him.

But at the same time—Medusa was unable to land a blow, barely able to dodge Stein’s. Maybe, if Marie could stand this for just a minute more, if she trusted Stein for just a minute more, this suicidal insanity might give them a chance of winning.

Finally there was a lull in their attacks. Both Stein and Medusa stood in place, several yards away from each other, breathing heavily.

“Stein—” Marie said nervously, but his attention was elsewhere.

“What’s wrong, Medusa?” he taunted. “This isn’t like you. You’re not mocking me, are you?”

Something glittered in Medusa’s eyes, hatred and delight with the challenge of battle. For a moment, her gaze fell on Marie, and a chill went through the weapon.

“Don’t think you’ve won yet, _children_.”

She rushed towards Stein. This time, he didn’t bother to dodge, only raised Marie to block the charge. But that was exactly what Medusa had wanted; Marie felt the witch’s strong fingers wrap around her and hold her tight. Medusa flashed a triumphant smile at Stein.

“Vector Plate!”

Two of the black arrows appeared, one under Medusa’s feet and one under Stein’s, pointing in opposite directions. Marie felt herself ripped from his arm. In an instant, she transformed back into her human form, bursting out of Medusa’s grasp as she did so, and swung at the witch’s face with her fist in a hammer. Medusa deflected the blow with a lattice of arrows and then twisted them so that they rushed at Marie. She barely managed to duck.

Medusa chuckled. “You can’t defeat me alone, girl.”

She was probably right; Marie needed to get back to Stein, and quickly. She shot a glance at her partner—and what she saw made her stomach drop. His right arm was hanging at his side, bloodied from having Marie ripped away, but even more alarmingly, he was curled in on himself, shaking, panting. With their resonance link broken, he was vulnerable to his own madness, that feeling of icy fingers sinking into the crevices of his brain—

“Stein!”

He looked up at her cry, his eyes wild and begging for help.

Marie ran towards him, but before she’d taken three steps, she found herself blasted in the other direction by a Vector Plate. She gasped in pain as she skidded across the ground near Medusa’s feet. The witch looked down at her and smiled.

“Oh, no,” she said, her eyes dancing with mad excitement. “I think not.”

Marie tried to scramble to her feet, but Medusa was faster, shooting vectors out of the ground before Marie could find her balance and forcing her to roll away from Stein to avoid them.

“You are a _nuisance_ ,” Medusa said, producing a new set of arrows to emphasize the word, “to both of us. Never forget that. Just because you stifle the part of him that finds you to be a hindrance, don’t think it’s completely gone. In the right state of mind, Stein would jump at the chance to get rid of you.”

“M-Marie…” Stein choked. Marie couldn’t tell from his tone of voice whether he meant _don’t listen to her_ or _I’m sorry_ or _help me help me HELP ME_. What did it matter what he meant? She needed to get to him, save him from himself and from this witch who wanted to own him only to destroy him. She leapt to her feet and at Medusa, catching her off guard and managing to land a punch that sent her rocketing backwards. This was the last chance she’d get; she darted towards Stein—she was almost there—

“ _No!_ ” Medusa snarled, and Marie found herself suddenly stopped by a thick black arrow protruding through her torso. She looked at it in confusion, and then choked as the pain hit, a slicing fire just under her ribs. When the arrow withdrew, she wasn’t even aware of falling to the ground, only that her line of sight had suddenly changed. She tried to look towards Stein, but her vision went blurry.

Soft footsteps approached. Medusa knelt to look Marie in the eye, wiped away her tears so that they could see each other properly.

“He’s mine now,” Medusa said, her face nearly split in two by a sadistic grin.

 _No_ , Marie thought feebly, and tried to stand or sit up or do _anything_ , but she couldn’t move, and the attempt made nausea crowd out her vision. Medusa laughed. It was the last thing Marie knew before blacking out completely.


	2. Gain

Medusa stood to watch Stein’s last fight against inevitability. There was beauty in his struggle—in his ragged breaths and his taut, trembling muscles. He was trying to laugh and trying to keep from laughing, making a sound like a whine instead. He hadn’t accepted yet that a mind stretched as far as his could only snap.

This went on for nearly a minute before she gave a soft sigh of impatience. His self-control was more impressive than she’d expected, and annoying. But it would only take the lightest of pushes to send him over the edge, and Medusa had never been above direct action to get what she wanted.

She approached him. Sensing her, he looked up, wildfire in his eyes. He grunted-whined something that was probably supposed to mean _get away from me, witch_ and swung a poorly-aimed Soul Menace at her. She didn’t even need to dodge. She drew closer to him and took his head in her hands and brought her lips to his. He fought, pushed at her—but only weakly, and it was a simple matter to breathe one of her snakes into him. Then she stood back and watched him lose himself.

He gave one last whine of despair before it turned into desperate, high-pitched laughter, breathless and rushed and the most beautiful sound Medusa had ever heard. She’d thought so the first time she’d heard it, too—when he’d come so close to killing her—and had heard it since in many particularly pleasant dreams. It meant he was beyond control. Beyond rationality. It meant he was closer to animal than man, and ruled by pure, violent desire alone. Now he threw back his head and laughed from his gut—the boasting laugh of one who has escaped from prison. The tension that had plagued his every movement earlier was gone.

 _See_ , she thought, _you prefer this. You should have stopped fighting me long ago._

When he’d had his fill of that, he calmed and looked at Medusa with a smirk that most found disturbing. He considered her for a moment; she could imagine the violent fantasies he saw. Then his smirk widened and he rushed at her, a ready Soul Menace crackling around his left palm. “I’m going to take you apart,” he said, his eyes revealing a feverish lust at the prospect.

She sidestepped it easily and chuckled. “Now, now,” she teased. “Is that any way to treat the one who freed you?”

“Like I care.” He came at her again, this time with his right hand. This, she blocked rather than dodged, and she could feel his arm trembling.

“Vector Storm!” The arrows shot up from around her feet and Stein was knocked backwards. He grunted as he hit the ground, but as he pulled himself to his feet, his smirk returned. …Interesting. Medusa loved that smirk and the message it sent, but right now she wanted to erase it. She wanted to make him realize that he had fallen into her power, and that there was no escape for him. She wanted to see that despair in his eyes.

That would mean going on the offensive.

As Stein came at her this time, she sent a few Vector Arrows straight at him. Focused as he was on his charge, he didn’t try to dodge or block them, so several pierced his skin. Still he continued towards her without slowing. But she was expecting it and created an effortless shield of vectors. He pressed against the barrier, trying to break through it, and Medusa leaned towards him with her eyelids lowered sensuously. “We’ve played this game before, Doctor.”

“I won then,” he said, baring his teeth in a grin.

Medusa tipped her head back and laughed. “Yes, you did. But you were fighting with Deathscythe then, weren’t you? Now you’re all alone.” She snuck a few arrows around behind him. “You are no match for me now.”

He noticed the arrows in the nick of time and countered them with his Soul Menace. But while he was absorbed in that, Medusa used a few Vector Plates to circle him and land a kick on his exposed head. He fell to the ground, and before he could recover she had caught him on a handful of vectors that carried him seven feet into the air and then dropped him. As he landed on his back, he coughed, expelling blood from a pierced lung.

She held out an open hand and clenched it; in response, several vectors wrapped around Stein’s upper arms, binding him to the floor. As he struggled, she strolled towards him, finally landing a foot on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat and the rushing of his breath through her sole. He bent his neck to glare at her, the fire still in his eyes; he didn’t realize yet that he’d lost, and he still longed to fight. So she crouched down, resting her other knee on the floor for balance and bringing her tail snake to his throat.

“Doctor Stein,” she breathed, “tell me, how do you think the game is going to end this time?”

His eyes flickered to her tail and then to her face, and for the first time she saw a hint of fear in his eyes. She leaned forward, pressing her foot into his chest and feeling his breath grow labored in return. “You cannot overpower me. You have never had that ability. You were doomed from the moment you came after me. Stein…” And she reached her finger down to trace his lips gently. Now confusion showed on his face for a moment, until the snake she’d placed inside him responded to her touch and started coming out again. It was no longer necessary. He gagged as Medusa drew the magic creature out of his throat and back into her hand, and Medusa smiled. “I need you to understand how thoroughly in my power you are. I can do whatever I want with you. Pain, pleasure, sanity, insanity… they are all mine to give or take. Do you understand?”

He breathed heavily, not wanting to give in but wary of a demonstration.

“Stein,” she said, “I asked you a question.” And she twitched her tail very slightly to open a line of red on his neck. Still he said nothing, though the fear—crazed, hopeless fear—in his eyes grew. Medusa could feel herself growing angry. She was patient when she wanted to be, but she hated to have her prey dangled in front of her like this. She summoned up five more arrows and aimed them at his heart, his lungs, his stomach, his forehead. “Answer me, Stein. I would so hate to waste you.”

He struggled against his bonds and his eyes darted around desperately, looking for escape. There was none. She pressed the arrows closer to his skin, drawing blood, and finally his gaze came back to her. The shape of his madness changed, cowed, and his struggles quieted. His lips trembling, he spoke. “I understand.”

“What do you understand?”

“That I…” The despair in his eyes showed her that he did understand, that it would take but a few words for him to give himself over to her because she’d left him no other way to survive. But she would not let him go without saying those words.

“That you what, Doctor Stein?”

“I am completely in your power,” he said, and at the hint of awe mingled in with his fear, Medusa had to smile.

“Very good.” She retracted her arrows, shifted so that she was straddling him, and then lowered her face to his. This kiss was not to poison him with one of her snakes; it was gentle, almost pure, meant to comfort him. Or, if he still had the sense not to take it at face value, it was to madden him with contradiction, with the three-way difference between what he wanted and what he expected and what she would give him. She had released the vectors that bound his arms, but he did not move.


	3. Submission

His moments of lucidity were mercifully rare. Most of the time, he was unaware of thinking or of not thinking, content to be driven by Medusa’s quiet, smiling suggestions or the urges within him. To appease his still-fierce curiosity, Medusa allowed him access to her library. It was full of blasphemy (by Death’s standards) and information he had never encountered before—and yet very rarely did he manage to retain anything he read. Nothing was connecting in his mind anymore. Once he read the same sentence over and over and over again, for a whole day, and the instant Medusa touched his shoulder for dinner he forgot what the sentence had been about.

When he was not in the library, he ambled through the rest of Medusa’s home, usually winding up in her lab. He was fascinated by her experiments—had always been fascinated by her experiments, even back when he was sane and on the side that didn’t suit him. He’d had to remind himself, back then, that he felt neither interest in the theory nor admiration for her execution of the black blood, but horror at what she’d done to her own child. He’d forbidden himself to get anywhere near Crona. Now Medusa wouldn’t let him near Crona, either, for fear that he would contaminate her ongoing research. So instead he rooted messily through her older notes and materials, feeling an excitement deep in his gut at the sheer _immorality_ of her work.

Sometimes he left her things in disarray, a small act of rebellion. And she scolded and punished him in return, but it felt unnecessary. He did not—could not—forget that he was under her control. There was cool dominance in her eyes that always reminded him: he was alive by her choice. And when her touch lingered too long on his face, her eyes too intent, he knew that she was weighing her desire to destroy him. He wondered how long he would last if one day she said “yes” rather than “no” to that desire. Part of him itched to find out.

It was like that every time she took him to bed, too: they were never sure up until the last minute whether they were trying to kill each other or making love. They used nails and teeth, her snakes and his scalpels, if they were handy, and they battled for dominance and each tried to take more than the other was willing to give. It was violence, mutual rape, often almost murder—but in the end, they always settled on just sex because it felt so _good_ to play like this and they suited each other too perfectly to waste.

And on the days when he was too far gone to fight, she still knew how to evoke a response from him. She focused her attentions on the places where she had hurt him: the hole she’d put through his stomach, the imprint of her teeth at his neck, the lesions on his arm where she’d ripped Marie away. She was gentle, almost loving, in her caresses. It was a reminder of everything she could do to him; it was a threat and a comfort. When he shook, mesmerized by her control over him, her touch became even softer—maddeningly so, until he dragged her close and demanded more.

And when it was over, when Medusa rested her head near his neck as their bodies calmed, he had a moment of clarity or perhaps the worst insanity of all and thought that maybe he belonged here and was meant to belong to her. Maybe he was happy here. Maybe he was at peace.

But.

There were always those other moments.

Those rare but devastating moments of sobriety, when the darkness cleared from his mind and Stein remembered who he was, who he was supposed to be, who he had decided to be long ago when he’d been given the choice between a long life in servitude and a likely early death in freedom. His moral framework—artificially constructed—tried to reestablish itself. His limits snapped back into place, and horror at what he was doing overcame him. _I can’t be here. Medusa is a vile woman, a witch, a_ monster _who is preying on me like she would on any other weakened creature. I said I would fight against this part of me—_

He tried to stay calm, but with Ashura free the world was steeped in fear, so it never took long for desperation to sink into him. So then he rushed to the door of his room—it was not a cell, or at least it did not seem like a cell when he was fine with being there—and he found it locked, so he shouted for his lover-captor-enemy. She never came, not when he was like that, not after the first time when he’d almost slashed her throat with a scalpel. So he tried the door again and then shouted invectives at her. He screamed and ranted and swore and in the process, in his fervor, he forgot what he was shouting about and the moment of sanity passed and when he realized it, it was almost funny so he began to laugh even as he kept pounding on the door. And then Medusa came to him at last. She unlocked the door and came in and pushed his shaking body onto the bed and fucked him until the last wisps of his sanity faded. She fucked him until he wanted it, until it was all he wanted, until desire for her and her confident madness choked out everything else. And when she knew she had his attention, her lips curled into a lazy smile and she whispered into his ear:

 _Why don’t you stop trying? There’s nowhere for you to go back to._

 _There’s no_ one _for you to go back to._

 _They don’t want you back._

 _That’s why they haven’t come for you._

 _They’ve given up on you._

 _You’re the only one who still thinks you can be saved._

 _And that’s why you’ll be so—much—happier when you give up these attempts._

 _You’ll be happier if you accept it:_

 _You’re mine._

 _And I am your last hope._


	4. Temptation

Stein awoke suddenly to the realization that he was not in his own bed. It was a softer mattress than his, and when he opened his eyes the room was neither dark nor lit with his sickly fluorescents; instead he saw a single candle burning by what appeared to be a door. The candle was carved into the form of a coiled snake—and so all at once he remembered where he was and what he had been like for he didn’t even know how long. But right now, he was sane. Right now he had the chance to escape the witch’s grasp, if he remained calm. He sat up, then stood up, considering each action carefully. Already he could feel the madness creeping back in, but he knew that feeling and could hold it off for some time if he focused.

He found his coat draped over the bedpost, shrugged it on, and checked the pocket. Then he went to his door. Finding it locked, he began to shout for Medusa.

*

It was well past midnight, but Medusa was still awake, curled up in a corner of her lab to take notes on the day’s experiments. There had been some trouble with the Clown’s battle stamina, which she would have to address tomorrow. So absorbed was she in that problem that she didn’t hear Stein the first time he called her. But the sound of her name had half-caught her attention, and then she heard _bitch_ , and then _coward_ and _what have you done to me you damned bitch come and face me_ in a voice full of anguish, and she laid aside her notes and listened. The tone in his voice was one she’d never heard before; he sounded like a child in the grip of a nightmare. But he had told her before that he did not dream.

She slid out of her chair and down the hallway to Stein’s cell. “What is it?” she called, her voice high and pleasant and ironic. She did not bother to hide the cool undertone of her control. “I’m coming, Stein. What’s wrong? Are you suffering?”

“What are you _doing_ to me?” His voice was ragged and shaking.

Medusa arrived at his door and pulled the key out of her pocket. “I’m not doing a thing to you, Stein. You sound horrible—I’m coming in.”

She unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly—and before she realized what was going on Stein had lunged at her. She saw light flash off a blade and jumped back instinctively; the scalpel grazed her throat anyway. Hissing in indignation, she blasted a handful of arrows at him, knocking him backwards into the wall. She wrapped vectors around his wrists and pulled them just tight enough to break the skin and pulled his arms over his head, digging the ends of the vectors into the wall behind him. The scalpel clattered to the floor. And not until then did she inhale and examine the situation. She felt blood trickle down her neck as she gazed at Stein.

He must have been faking the tremor in his voice before; his eyes were too clear for it to have been real. Even bound, he was looking at her in defiance. There was an intense fire in his gaze that she had not seen for almost a week, and she narrowed her eyes as she realized that he had found his sanity again.

Under her scrutiny, he smirked. It was not the wide grin of animal pleasure that she’d come to know so well—it was a smile of triumph that matched the boldness in his eyes. He thought he’d won somehow. A shiver ran between her shoulders as the desire to subjugate him again flared within her, and failing that—

The blood trickled down over her collarbone. She stepped towards Stein and ran a gentle finger over the stitches across his face. “Look at _you_ ,” she murmured. “You must be so proud of yourself. Are you enjoying this visit from your sanity?” She leaned closer to whisper in his ear. “You don’t honestly think it’ll last, do you?”

His breath was careful and consciously regulated. She laughed.

“Of course it won’t. You’re feeling it already, aren’t you? It’s creeping back into your mind—closing in from the corners— _inevitably_ —”

“I don’t need you to tell me that, witch.” His voice was artificially calm, and he was shaking; Medusa could tell that he was tense with pent-up energy. She wondered why he made no attempt to attack her with his unfettered legs—perhaps he feared that allowing himself another moment of violence would give the madness an opportunity to take him over. How unfortunate for him that there was nothing to hold _her_ back.

“I’m hurt, Doctor Stein,” she said, slipping a hand up his shirt. He tried to pull away, but he was up against the wall and had no room to escape her touch as she arched her fingers and pressed, imagining the little crescents her nails were forming on his skin. “Am I just some nameless witch to you now?”

She met his eyes and smiled because that was one thing she knew she could never be. He did not smile back. He was defying her still, as if he deserved pride, and he had attacked her and he needed to be punished. She had plenty of ideas about how this could be carried out; the problem was that so many of them were permanent. Those were the ones clamoring ceaselessly within her no matter how much she tried to tell them _not now, not yet_. Usually, the Sway of her magic—that prickling in her shoulders and the pit of her stomach—let itself be answered by those words, but now that her prey was completely in her power, it pulsed through her, buzzed in every corner of her body, stronger and better than any sexual anticipation. She rested her head on his chest, breathing softly and slowly. She was in control. She was master of her instincts unlike the foolish young witches of today who got off on cheap, unproductive destruction. She knew exactly how hard she was digging her nails into his chest, knew that she was not _quite_ drawing blood but that she was oh-so-tantalizingly close. She would not kill him tonight, not like this, but oh, how she _wanted_ to—

“Do it.”

The surprise must have shown in her face as she pulled back suddenly, certain that she’d misheard. But no, he was meeting her eyes again, and this time the fire in his gaze was focused squarely on her.

“Show me. I’ve never seen it, have I?” His tongue darted across his lips, but whether that was a calculated ploy like his hysterics earlier or an unconscious action she had no idea. “What you’re like when you let yourself lose control.”

It was true; he hadn’t. Even when they’d fought underground and she’d had to relinquish hope of turning him, she had been conscious in her attacks against him. Not like now. Now the Sway was pressing her to give herself over to the magic within her and let _it_ demolish him. She was too small a vessel for the power she contained.

She said, “What makes you think I’m anywhere near losing control?”

He gave a short, sharp laugh. “Please, Medusa,” he said, and the patronizing tone in his voice made her catch her breath in furor. “You think I could fail to recognize your attitude? You’re counting every breath, holding yourself back like you’re on some kind of leash, but you’re shaking because you know what you want and you know in your head exactly how long you’ll be able to fight it. Do you really think I don’t know what that looks like? I can see it in you as easily as you can see it in me. We’re the _same_ , Medusa, the very same—” He started to laugh again; but then he must have realized that he was raving, because he stopped himself abruptly, closed his eyes, and went back to counting his own breaths. In a moment, he opened his eyes again, and they were focused and mocking but in their depths was fear. “Why not just give in? It would be easier than fighting, and you know you’d enjoy it.” He said it as if she should have recognized the words. And then, “I want to see what you’re really like.”

“How _sweet_.” Medusa gave a bubbling laugh. “And tell me, just what would you do with that information in the half-second between gaining it and dying painfully?”

“I’d understand you,” he answered, as if this was obvious and it was all he could want. But his eyes didn’t match his voice. They shone not with love or infatuation or even the curiosity that he might claim as a more likely motive; they were waiting for her response, calculating.

 _…Aha._ Certainty that this, too, was a façade clicked into place in Medusa’s mind. She should have known; he was selfish and must have realized by now that any but the pettiest victories were beyond him. With this realization, the willpower that had been flickering before flared back to its full, familiar strength. She smiled, and the look in Stein’s eyes faltered.

“Very clever, Doctor Stein.” She dug her nails into his skin again, this time drawing blood because she did not need to fear losing her control. She could still feel the Sway buzzing within her, but now it was no more than pleasant background noise. “Harnessing your sense of futility to overcome your fear of death, in the hope of claiming a little dignity for your final moments by controlling yourself when I cannot.” He’d tried to overcome her. He could not overcome her. She looked into his eyes and saw that the fire in them before had been fueled by hope; it was gone now, hatred and fear taking its place. Her smile widened.

“Let me tell you a few things, Stein.” She whispered the words, leaning in to let her lips brush his neck as she spoke, enjoying his shudder of revulsion. “First: when I kill you—and we both know that that is inevitable—it will _not_ be because you have given me permission to do so. When you die, you will die begging me to let you live just a minute longer. Second: you _will not_ have the dignity of dying sane. The mind that we call ‘Franken Stein’ will be long gone by the time I destroy the body by that name. Consider that while I’m purging this moment of sanity from you: this may be the last time you realize you exist. And finally, Doctor, my dearest, cheeky little pet…” She took a half-step backwards, withdrawing her hand from his chest and smoothing his shirt down sweetly in a playful-false demonstration of tenderness. “Do not delude yourself into thinking that your self-control rivals mine. You have fought yourself for a mere thirty years. The Sway of Magic has tried for over eight centuries to take me over, growing stronger each time it is denied. I have fought it because I have a goal in mind. _You_ struggle because you’re trying to bow to a sense of right and wrong that doesn’t agree with your own. You struggle _because you are told to_ , and that is why it won’t take long for you to give in when you have a few snakes wriggling through your veins.” She let out some of the snakes that had been crackling beneath her skin. They danced eagerly around her forearm. “Say ‘ah,’ Doctor.”

He was shaking, eyes trained on the snakes as he tried to figure out whether it was worth it to defy her. His mouth remained clamped shut.

She chuckled. “What foolish resistance. I have other options, Doctor Stein. Your ears, your nostrils, your eye sockets—how would you like to go blind and know that you’ll never see anything but hallucinations for the rest of your life? Or I could go lower…” She ran her fingers along his waistband and let her pets slither into his pants and between his legs. He tensed. His breath, still coming through his nose rather than his firmly-shut mouth, grew labored with the effort it took to resist, _resist_ —fear and carnality were feeding his madness—

He spat in her face.

Instantly, she gave her snakes permission to _bite_ , and his body jerked as they did so and as his saliva dribbled down her cheek. But he was slack now, his shoulders and his jaw, and when he managed to tip his face up to look at her, she saw that he was gone. The erection he’d been fighting before finally rose, but he seemed unaware of it as he sniggered, his eyes rolling in their sockets. She called her snakes back into her hand. After considering him for a moment, she grasped the screw on either side of his head and pulled him closer, straining his neck.

“Do you think that was a victory, Stein?” she asked, staring into his eyes though they were darting all over the place, from her face to over her shoulder to empty air. “Are you proud of yourself because you gave rather than letting me take, because in the last split-second you showed some backbone? What an achievement. An accomplishment for the ages. Except that you don’t even remember it now, do you? How you waste your efforts.”

He giggled. “Sore loser.”

“Foolish _boy_.” She slammed his head against the wall. “How do you propose I’ve lost, exactly? I have you in my power and insane once more. You’d be falling over yourself with lust for me if you weren’t bound. And…” She trailed her hands down his neck, slowly, tantalizingly, and when he tried to slip his leg between hers in response, she kneed him in the groin. Smiling, she pressed against him to better feel him shake. “You’ve had a bit too much attitude for my tastes tonight. You attacked me. Even worse, you pulled me away from my notes, Stein, and I was working on something very important. I believe I owe you a bit of punishment.”

His mouth hung open mindlessly, ready to receive her kiss and the snakes she poured into him. As she directed them to writhe within him, tightening around his organs, stretching his skin more than it had any right to stretch, she felt the Sway pulsing through her. It was mocking her for holding back but it was rejoicing, too, as he squirmed and contorted and begged her to stop. And when she reclaimed her snakes, when she stepped back to avoid the vomit that followed them out of Stein’s mouth, when she finally released her vectors and let him slump to the floor in exhausted, snuffling giggles, she looked down on him in disgust and wondered if maybe she’d let the Sway control her the whole time. She claimed to love him and almost meant it, and yet she took such pleasure in ravaging his brilliant mind and turning him into _this_. It wasn’t regret she felt. She was puzzled. She had fought the Sway of Magic for over eight hundred years, and she had not always won. Inevitably, some of it had to be mixed in with her natural personality. Inevitably, anything that could be called her natural personality must have faded away centuries ago.

Because he was long past hearing, let alone answering, she looked down at the broken boy in front of her and asked, “Do you know this feeling, Stein?” He did not even twitch in reply, and she sighed.

“How boring you are.”


	5. Love

She told him she loved him because it turned his stomach. He shuddered when she said it, repulsed and grateful and powerless to escape her either way, and it pleased her. So she didn’t care whether the words were true or not. They were for effect. They produced that mix of need and terror in his eyes that she craved.

They could have been true; it depended on how one defined love. Medusa had never thought that her sister was capable of love—what she felt was a self-centered desire to draw everything into herself. But Arachne called that love, and it wasn’t really all that different from what Medusa felt towards Stein.

What she felt was selfish and possessive, but it was far more tailored than Arachne’s greed. She kept Stein because never before, in eight hundred years of life, had she met someone who matched her desires so flawlessly.

*

“What do you think madness is?”

Stein didn’t respond right away. He was lying on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, and she watched his eyes roam as if he saw something moving there. With a gentle hand on his cheek, she guided his gaze towards her. “Define ‘madness’ for me, Stein.”

But he wasn’t really looking at her. He shrunk away, trembling. “They’re everywhere,” he whispered with a helpless giggle.

Medusa sighed. She could never get him to tell her what ‘they’ were—obviously hallucinations of some sort, the ripples of Ashura’s wavelength that his mind caught so easily, but what exactly she didn’t know. And when he was seeing whatever he saw, it was impossible to get any sense out of him. She disentangled herself from the sheets and slid back into her clothes. If Stein had no opinion to offer her, she might as well get back to her own work on the matter.

“Medusa,” he said, voice thick as if he was speaking in his sleep.

She pulled her hood over her head, but didn’t leave the room just yet.

“You’ve only yourself to blame that I don’t make a good partner for intellectual conversation.”

Now she turned back to him, to treat herself to his expression—the irony-scorn-hatred-despair that meant somewhere in the depths of his mind was a sliver of sanity that realized just how broken he was. A smile stretched across her face. “Madness,” she answered her own question, “is when you know something is going to destroy you, but you can’t bring yourself to get away from it.”

His eyes, numb, full of need and anguish, bore into hers as if she were the only person in the world. “Sounds about right.”

*

He got underfoot. Constantly. When she was working on something that required her full attention, she locked him in his room, but she preferred to let him roam free when she could; he was more interesting that way. He looked through her research with a wholehearted curiosity that she found almost flattering. In return, she put up with sometimes having to pry the test tube she wanted from his grasp or chase him from her lab for a little quiet so she could think. It was worst of all when his lust awoke on its own and he came on to her while she was trying to work. The words _Not now, I’m busy_ never seemed to mean anything to him then; nor was he deterred by the sudden, painful convulsions of the single snake she always kept inside him. Instead she was forced to waste magic laying a path of Vector Plates to get him out of her hair. At least she knew her home well enough to propel him back to his room (with another plate preventing him from leaving once she got him there) without looking up from her experiment.

*

“What do you think madness is?”

He looked at her, and she knew that she was going to get an answer this time, a good one, one worthy of someone who had spent much of his life trying to answer that question. There was light in his eyes, but no struggle. He had found the perfect, rare equilibrium where he was mad but still human enough to realize the freedom insanity afforded him.

He said, “Insensible actions characterized by dampened or missing desire for self-preservation and often caused by unbridled passion.”

Medusa quirked an eyebrow. “My, what a technical definition.”

“It’s from my dissertation. It was a stupid, rambling thing—less a conclusion than a collection of thoughts. I think they only accepted it because it’s the only time an insane person has ever analyzed himself.”

“I suppose that does make it valuable.” Smiling, she traced the scar across his chest. “Ramble on, Doctor Stein.”

He pulled away from her touch and got a cigarette from the pocket of his lab coat that lay crumpled on the floor. Lighting it, he sat back down on the bed. “Everyone contains some degree of madness.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“In other words, there’s no one who wouldn’t risk his or her life and make unpredictable actions for some reason. The problems tend to develop when the ‘trigger’ is tied to some basic human feeling—fear, curiosity, the desire for power…”

“Because it’s always there?”

“That’s part of it.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “But it’s less a matter of frequency than one of depth, so to speak. We’re talking about instinctive human characteristics here. They’re not learned or developed slowly over time—they’re inborn traits that underlie every other thought we ever have.”

“Inborn madness, in other words.” She smirked. “I see. So it’s hardly your fault you wound up like this. You were born with a proclivity to madness.”

“This isn’t about blame,” he said, looking at her with reproach. “It was never about excusing myself to others. I wrote that paper for my own satisfaction. Because I wanted to solve myself.”

“And in the process, you gave Death and his minions such wonderful guidelines on suppressing people like you. Well done.”

She expected him to respond to her teasing with sarcasm or defiance, but instead she saw him tense, saw uncertainty and fear creep into his eyes. “Stein…”

She’d disturbed his equilibrium by reminding him of Death’s former power over him; she hadn’t meant to. It wasn’t that she didn’t like breaking him, but—not now.

“Forget it,” she said. “Forget I said anything.” She pulled him into her arms as if to say _It doesn’t matter what they think about you. I have you now, and I want you to be like this._ He sat in her embrace, docile and shaking, until he finished his cigarette; then he pulled away from her, got dressed, and wandered out the door.

*

There were times when it almost seemed like they trusted each other. Once he cut across her chest deeply enough that it did not stop bleeding right away, and he offered to stitch it up.

“It’ll scar,” he warned, as if she couldn’t have deduced that from his own appearance. Nevertheless she lay down across one of her operating tables, breathing calmly as his needle went in and out of her skin. There was a kind of intimacy to it. When it scarred, it would be a permanent reminder that he could be gentle with her.

But at other times he fought, struggled like an animal in a trap. Gripping her arm so tightly it hurt: “What did you do to Marie?”

She tried to stare him down, to remove his hand by the force of her glare, but his resolve flared at odd times and she had to pry his fingers loose. And then she told him, _I let Sid Barrett take her away on the condition that I got to keep you._ Or, _I killed her. Her body’s probably still rotting in front of that lab_. Or, _You mean you haven’t found her yet? I took her in too. She’s been wandering this lab, even crazier than you are._

She watched him try to claw towards sanity, watched him fail. She said, “Why do you keep asking me that? The more answers I give you, the lower your chance of discerning the truth.”

For that he had no response. But the first time, she’d asked him why he cared, what he saw in her, and though he hadn’t been able to put words to it, it was in his eyes: Marie flooded him with hope. She hadn’t asked again.

*

Medusa had always been a scientist and a hoarder of information, so it was only natural that she began to pick apart Stein’s life. She asked him questions whenever he seemed capable of answering—questions like _why do you want to dissect everything?_ and _what did your parents think of you?_ and, in absolute fascination, _what’s it like inside your head?_

One night, as they lay together bloodied and bruised and certain that they belonged with each other, she admired the stitches that riddled his body. She was unsurprised to learn that they mostly closed cuts of his own handiwork, experiments and observations and attempts to dig the madness out of the recesses of his body.

“What’s this one?” she asked, touching the band of stitches around his right arm. But he caught her hand suddenly, holding it so tightly that her fingers stung. She raised an eyebrow. He was glaring at her, eyes shining in scorn.

“I hated the doctors who analyzed me. I drove one of them insane.”

She smiled indulgently. “ _Now_ you’re comparing me to them.”

“I am not your experiment,” he spat, and Medusa couldn’t help but laugh.

“You don’t believe yourself when you say that, do you, Stein?” She entwined one leg around him and stroked his chest with her free hand. But there was hatred in his eyes, and his grip on her other hand only tightened so that she thought he’d break her fingers. She bit back a hiss of pain and instead loosed her snake from her shoulder and told it to bare its fangs against his throat. His gaze shifted to watch it warily.

“Your choice, Stein,” she said. “She’s poisonous.”

He released her hand, still glaring as she flexed her fingers thoughtfully. Then she pushed him down and straddled him so that he couldn’t escape.

“I told you once before,” she murmured, “I can and will do whatever I want with you. You will be whatever I want you to be: my experiment, my mad puppet—my lover—” She ground against him once. When he tried to push her away, she wrapped him in enough vectors to hold him immobile. “You ought to stop fighting. I’ve claimed you because you fascinate me. Be flattered, Stein. You might as well, because you will not escape me.”

*

“What do you think madness is?”

In a voice that sounded like it was being dragged across gravel, he said, “ _This_.” He was shuddering.

She stroked his jaw, to no avail; so then she snuggled close to him, wrapped herself around him, brought her lips to his. He didn’t respond at first—couldn’t stop shaking—but as she continued to kiss him, not forceful but firm, he began to kiss back. He wound his fingers into her hair, and when they pulled back, his hands came to rest on her face.

“I love you, Stein,” she said seriously; and as he curled against her, at peace in her arms because she and no one else would accept him like this, she found herself really weighing her own words. She tried to clear things that were not love from her consideration, stifling possessiveness and greed and triumph and scientific fascination. It left her feeling hollow, because those emotions were all that she was.


	6. Breaking

Being insane gave his mind certain freedoms, the freedom to wander—like into the liquid he was pouring from one beaker to another to the first to the other, feeling his mind flow back and forth with it. It felt languid and unconcerned, this constant vertigo. Constant falling.

He was allowed to do no more than play with this, Medusa’s treasured black blood, even though this sample was years out of date. He was not allowed to ingest it or even let it contact his bare skin. She promised to extract it quite painfully if he did.

 _I thought you liked me crazy._ And she _Not as much as I like my research. You are anything but a control subject._ And he _The Kishin is no control subject._ And she _The Kishin was the end, not the means. My black blood is not for you._ But he couldn’t help being fascinated, couldn’t help being drawn to it, couldn’t help toying with it in the hope that he’d make a mistake. If he made a mistake, it wasn’t his fault. She would punish him still but he would have this information, he would know what black blood did to the mind.

His hands were careful, though, surgeon’s hands, with nary a tremor as he handled the beakers. So he poured back and forth, and he’d forgotten hours ago what his intention was as his mind slipped away from him. Suddenly, though, he was drawn back into what he was doing by—something. He wasn’t really sure what, and he wasn’t even all there yet, just… aware of himself again, aware that he was a man pouring black blood and not the reverse.

“Stein…?”

Something was nudging his mind. It was not uncomfortable, but nor was it welcome. He didn’t even look towards what he heard because it was impossible. Instead he trained his eyes on the black blood and tried to recall the see-saw feeling from moments before.

“Stein? Can you hear me?”

Persistent. He rolled his eyes to the side and saw exactly whom he expected; she was looking at him in concern, in what she never called fear because she didn’t want to be afraid of him even when it was the wisest choice.

“Hello, Marie.” He smiled patronizingly and disquietingly. “I don’t think I’ve ever hallucinated you before.” And a hissing laugh escaped him. This was hilarious. When he’d been sane, he’d seen Medusa; now that he was insane, he hallucinated Marie. What irony.

“Stein,” the hallucination said in the patient, firm voice Marie used whenever she needed to fix him, “I’m not a hallucination. I’m really here.”

He looked back at the beakers in his hands, smiling to himself. “That’s not fair, lying like that. It’s not like you. Even my old hallucinations of Medusa usually told me the truth, and she’s a deceitful bi—” He stopped, wondering at the word that had nearly come out of his mouth, wondering if there was something wrong with him. Something inside of him felt shaken loose. The nudging sensation was stronger now, and with it a feeling of almost-familiarity. He knew this feeling, didn’t he? But he couldn’t place it—

And then the hallucination—then Marie who was _not_ a hallucination took his face in her hands, and her wavelength went through him like a shock, like an earthquake, like any force of nature, really, that left ruin in its wake. His mind tumbled over itself, trying to find _right_ and _proper_ and _sane_ , and as the pieces started to settle into place he began to shake right down to his fingertips.

“Marie…” he said in a voice that barely came out at all.

“I’m here, Stein,” she repeated softly. “I came for you. I’m so sorry it took this long.”

Without thinking, he put down the empty beaker so that he could put a hand over Marie’s, which was still on his cheek. He was in shambles but he could feel Marie’s warmth moving through him, trying to put him back together. His breath felt choked. Marie was here. Marie was here.

“Listen, Stein.” She kept saying his name because they’d discovered that that helped anchor him to reality. “Sid and Neigus are distracting Medusa outside, but I don’t know how long Sid can keep diving underground, so we need to leave quickly… Stein?”

 _Leave…?_ A wave of something hot and cold and shaky all at once had gone through him at that word. Of course that was why she was here, to take him away—why else—but he couldn’t get his thoughts to line up. He could hardly grasp the concept. To leave—to get away from Medusa, from insanity—to go back to—

“What’re you thinking, Stein?”

“I’m of two minds,” he answered, and the words came out sounding twisted. He tried to take a mental step back, to consider himself objectively, to speak calmly and say exactly what he felt as Marie watched him in concern. “I do want—to go with you.” It was an overwhelming idea—the thought of leaving Medusa, of escaping from her clutches and giving his mind a chance to rebuild itself. The thought of going back to Death, to DWMA, to people—friends—who thought of him not as a trophy or an experiment but as a person, albeit a volatile and dangerous one who needed to be watched carefully and held back from the things that interested him most—

“But?” Marie prompted softly.

“But…” Stein tried to remember what side it was that he had last argued out loud. His eyes fell on the beaker he was still holding, and he felt his mouth stretch into a smirk. “But there’s still a part of me—” —buzzing in his blood, just beneath the surface of his clammy skin— “that wants to pour this black blood down your throat, to—drown you in it—to see what it would take to make _you_ go crazy—”

He felt her hands tremble once before she could still them, but she spoke calmly: “You wouldn’t do that to me, Stein. I know you wouldn’t.”

Stupid, naïve, enviable confidence. He closed his eyes to wrestle with his desires. It was attractive to consider her fear, the taste-smell-feel of it; she would fight him, but he would be stronger than her if he let himself. But he’d never be able to let himself, not against Marie. He cared about her, uncharacteristically, hated to see her hurt. Thoughts of her somehow carved their way into him even when he was lost in the depths of his insanity. He never knew for sure whether this was an effect of her wavelength or not, but it was the closest he ever came to feeling like a normal human, so he’d given up fighting it long ago.

Stein realized then that he was clutching the beaker to his chest rather protectively. He had to put it down. For several moments that stretched on far too long, he felt that the beaker and his arm, creaking as it unfolded and lowered towards the table he sat on, were the only things that existed. The ripples that formed when the beaker reached the table went through him, too, reverberating and overlapping in his chest until he told himself sternly that that was impossible. And then releasing the beaker proved to be another slow task. He was gripping it so tightly that his fingers prickled and it hurt to move them and once he relinquished this, once he renounced this insanity it would be an act of treason to take it up again. Surely he was out of chances. If he moved towards madness again he would be blacklisted, caught, killed. This was his last chance to be who he really was in the filthy depths of his mind—

He pulled his fingers away from the glass one by one. When he was no longer touching it, he moved his hand to his lap, feeling exhausted. He realized again that Marie was there, was still touching his face, was still sending her gentle wavelength through him.

“Stein?” she said quietly. “Will you come with me?”

He looked at her. His mouth tried to twist ironically, but he didn’t let it. Still, he spoke with a kind of amused sarcasm. “If I say no, are you going to knock me out and kidnap me?”

“That’s the idea,” Marie confessed lightly. Of course it was. Stein felt the smirk tug at his mouth again. It was dangerous to go after Medusa; if they were taking the risk, then of course they would make every effort to get a result whether the crazy rescuee wanted to be rescued or not.

Marie continued, “But I don’t want to do that to you, Stein. And I don’t think I’d get far if we can’t resonate and use Izuna.”

And Stein’s amusement crumbled away as something cold stung his heart. “She’d kill you,” he said, pure, horrible fact, and he did not state the associated facts: it would be slow and painful; she would make him watch and revel in torturing them both. The vision unfolded in his mind, Marie’s screams and the thick scent of blood in the air and over it all Medusa laughing, until he shoved it out of his thoughts so he could see what was before him.

“Stein, we need to hu—”

“Transform,” he said, and she sent him a smile that said _thank you_ and _I knew you’d come back_ before she morphed into her tonfa form and settled into his hand. The ropes wrapped around his forearm and her electricity began to flow through him. It hurt at first; there were a few panicked seconds during which he fumbled ineffectively with his wavelength like a drunk with a house key, Marie telling him to calm down and try again even though he could feel her panic mirroring his own. And then it clicked into place, and familiarity and comfort and _sanity_ flooded in.

He ran. Ran according to Marie’s directions, not thinking about how he was escaping Medusa, not wondering how she would react when she found out he was gone, not thinking anything that would disturb their resonance—so really, not thinking anything at all until they reached the van two miles away where Azusa waited. Then, as Azusa called Sid to communicate their success, Marie transformed back and the rails keeping his thoughts straight disappeared, so they tumbled to pieces again. Marie held him in her arms and kept the others from trying to speak to him, but she did not try to put him back together because if he wasn’t the one to fix himself then he’d never stay whole.


	7. Fear

Death had come to accept that there were some emotions that he would never know for himself. There was no authority higher than him, for example, so no matter how much he might regret something, he would never feel the guilty fear that clearly racked Franken Stein right now. He’d been in the Death Room for almost an hour now, and he hadn’t. Said. A word. He just sat on the edge of the raised platform, hunched over and facing away from Death.

Death let out a long sigh. “Um, Stein? I can’t do anything for you if you won’t talk to me.”

He was fairly sure that Stein wasn’t insane right now, just paralyzed by his fickle conscience. Stein’s actions were always extreme, so his conscience—or rather, the semblance of a conscience he’d finally managed to construct—was crippling when it struck. He’d once nearly died after a desperate attempt to “fix” himself. Death was wary of a repeat now.

“You’re not in any trouble. You were taken unwillingly and returned willingly, right? And you didn’t act against the DWMA at all, either. There’s no reason we can’t treat you like a rescued prisoner.”

Nothing. Death wondered briefly if a quick Reaper Chop to the head—to show him that things did not need to be this serious—would shake him out of it, but he doubted Stein would take that well. He needed to be coaxed, not smacked, to his senses.

“Sanity-wise, I know you’re not quite at 100% yet, but I don’t see why returning you to house arrest wouldn’t be sufficient. At the very, very worst, we might have to stick you in a prison cell until this whole Kishin deal blows over. What do you think?”

Finally, Stein looked over his shoulder at Death, his eyes exhausted. When he spoke, it was in an emotionless tone that Death recognized: a tone that meant he was crushing his own ego as much as possible to speak from an outside perspective. “What do you want from me?”

“Honesty. That’s all.”

“Clearly, you’ve already decided I’m innocent. Do you expect me to open up and hand you information that might contradict such a conclusion? I’m not that noble.”

“What a pessimist~ Isn’t it also possible that you might prove your own innocence?”

“I can’t do that, either.” Stein looked away again. “I know what I’ve done. I know what I deserve. But you’re too trusting, Lord Death. You’ll parse every word I say, looking for a way to remove guilt from where it belongs.”

Death silently appreciated the sentiment. This was what made Stein less worrisome than any pre-Kishin Death had ever come across: he never doubted that the rules applied to him or claimed that he had the right to go mad. When he acted immorally, it was with full knowledge of the consequences. Death found this reassuring, in a way, but he knew that at times like these it was sincerely unpleasant for Stein. So all he said out loud was, “What’s wrong with shifting the blame a little?”

“I spent a month and a half in the hands of the most dangerous witch alive.” Stein’s voice was cold. “And no matter how much you try to paint me as a victim, I was with her willingly. I wasn’t a prisoner.”

Death tilted his head to the side. “You could have left at any time?”

Stein didn’t answer right away, and when he did, he sounded almost reluctant. “She probably would have stopped me if I’d tried to leave. She locked me in my room at times, but I can’t even tell you how often she did because I rarely made any attempt to escape.”

“If she would have kept you from leaving, you were a prisoner. Isn’t that what the word means?” Stein was silent. “I guess that might be kind of embarrassing for a man of your caliber to admit, but—”

“This isn’t a matter of pride, Lord Death. You wanted honesty, didn’t you? I’m telling you, honestly, that I should not be considered a victim.”

“Why not?” Stein turned back to glare at him, and Death held up his hands in protest. “What? I’m not playing dumb,” he said, though that was probably a pretty accurate description of what he was doing. “I just want to hear why you think you weren’t a prisoner. Don’t tell me it’s because she was nice to you or something. That wouldn’t prove much, with her personality.”

Stein dropped his gaze to the floor, but he didn’t turn away. “Nothing like that, though she was… kind, at times, maybe even genuinely so. Or maybe I’m just fooling myself.” He smiled insincerely, looking sick, and then the smirk fell from his face as quickly as it had come as he continued. “My memories of the last month and a half are… incomplete. I know I spent time in her library, in her lab, and I must have read whatever I came across, but I can’t remember any of that. The only clear memories I have are the ones with Medusa in them—everything she said, every time she touched me …No matter how disgusted and ashamed I may be when I look back at it from a sane perspective, it doesn't change the fact that within those memories, I am satisfied—content. She answered all the twisted desires that I normally have to ignore. I was freer with her than I can ever be here. I wasn’t a prisoner. I was with her,” he said clearly, looking at Death, “because I wanted to be.”

“Hmmm.” Death put a hand to his face to think. “What about now? Do you still want to be with her?”

Stein smiled mirthlessly again. “I’ve wanted to be with her ever since I fought her the night of the anniversary ball. You know this. This does not change. The only factors that vary here are my fear and self-control—my sanity. For the moment, I’m fine on that account, but I can’t promise it will last. I know now that it’s not wholly unpleasant to be hers, and after being insane for so long, my defenses are not what they used to be. I doubt it would take much to push me back into her arms.”

Death could see fear—fear of his own weakness, and of consequences—in Stein’s eyes. He asked, “Do you think you belong in a prison cell?”

Stein shrugged uncomfortably. “I can’t bring myself to say ‘yes’ to that.”

“Well, I don’t either.” Not unless he proved willing to hurt others in an attempt to escape, and Death didn’t think it would come to that. Stein’s conscience was strong, even vicious. With that intact and with Marie around, Stein would probably stay more reliable than he himself expected. “I think house arrest should be plenty, don’t you?”

“Only if it’s more stringent than last time,” Stein muttered.

“If you say so~”

“Much more stringent.” He was looking sick again, probably caught in a paranoid vision of his own capabilities.

Death drew closer and patted him on the back. “You don’t need to worry, Stein. You’re going to be fine. We’re going to protect you.”

But there was a hint of resentment in the look Stein gave him then, so Death sat down next to him. After a moment, he asked, “Did you know that envy and jealousy are actually two different things?”

Stein looked nonplussed at the abrupt change in topic.

“It’s true. Jealousy actually means being afraid that something you own is going to be taken away from you. Justin told me. It was shortly after the fight for the Brew—I was kinda down, worrying about you and wondering if it was okay to hate the Kishin quite as much as I was thinking I hated him at that moment, and Justin tried to cheer me up. Well, maybe not.” Death’s shoulders drooped a little. “I guess he’d already gone a little crazy at that point, so maybe he was mocking me or something instead. But anyway! He told me that that Bible thing he’s always talking about says I’m a jealous god. I’m still not sure what that book has to do with me, but I think it’s right in this case. I get jealous. I don’t like to lose people I care about. So now that you’re back here, Stein, I don’t plan to let anyone take you away from me again. Okay?”

But Stein had grown tenser and tenser as Death spoke, and the look he gave Death now was one of cold furor.

“Something wrong?”

“I am _not_ ,” Stein said, “‘something you own.’”

Death tipped his head to the side: an invitation to continue.

“I am not a tool to be wielded by whomever thinks they have control of me at the moment, and I’m sick of being viewed as such. That goes equally for you _and_ Medusa. I do not belong to either of you. You don’t have a right to me. I’m on your side now, but that could change in an instant. It’s stupid to assume otherwise. I could have killed Marie when she came to rescue me and stayed with Medusa—”

“But,” Death broke in, “you didn’t.”

Stein fell silent, continuing to glare.

“And Marie didn’t have to knock you out to get you to come home, either. She tells me you came of your own free will.”

Now Stein’s anger gave way to suspicion and, with it, annoyance. “Now you’re going to tell me that that free will changes everything, aren’t you?”

Death nodded, pleased that he’d caught on. “Stein, I know it’s not easy to be you—to stay on my side when your brain is hardwired or whatever for chaos. I know my idea of order is foreign to you, and you resent it every bit as much as you need it. I’m sure you’re full of thoughts that would make me nervous, and sometimes they scare you and sometimes you embrace them. But you’ve been asked to choose between order and chaos several times now, and every time you’ve had to make that decision when sane, you’ve chosen order. Even this last time, when you weren’t fully sane, you chose to come back. I know this battle against yourself isn’t easy, but you’ve gotten _reeeally_ good at it.”

Stein’s mouth twisted once more into a sarcastic smile. “You’re too trusting, Lord Death.” Then he sunk his head into his arms, a stifled frustration appearing in his eyes. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t find your assessment to be entirely complimentary.”

Death patted his back again. “I wouldn’t ask you to.”


	8. Contradictions

Stein was not allowed to leave his house. He wore an anklet that worked more like a dog’s shock collar to enforce this. If Lord Death needed him for some reason, of course, it could be deactivated, but even then it was unlikely that Stein would need to go outside; his lab had plenty of mirrors that could be used for communication. Since Marie did his shopping, there was no other conceivable reason he might need to leave.

He wasn’t allowed visitors very often, either. Once Spirit had wheedled the right to drop by out of Lord Death, but Stein had been stiff and sarcastic and tense, and after one too many references to Spirit’s ex-wife, the redhead had gone off in a huff. Left behind, Marie turned to Stein and asked him just what he thought he was doing. Stein only shrugged tiredly. After that, Marie restrained herself to conveying greetings from his friends and students; on good days, he smiled to hear them.

She apologized for the extremity of his situation on the first night. Though she amounted to little more than a guard, she worried that Stein would resent her role in his captivity—and if he did, surely it would make his life even more unpleasant. But she needn’t have bothered. He only smirked at her and said, “It was all my idea, Marie. Well, except for the part where you get to be my babysitter.”

“That wasn’t your idea?”

“I spent almost three hours trying to convince Lord Death to take you away from me,” he said flatly.

She tilted her head in confusion. “Why would you…?”

“What do you think I spent my time with Medusa doing?”

And before she’d figured out how to respond to that, he caught her wrist a little too tightly to be joking and began to answer his own question in sadistic, explicit detail.

“ _Stop_ ,” Marie said after only a moment, pulling away and hoping it wasn’t obvious that her stomach was turning in disgust. Stein obeyed, the leer slipping off his face as he stared—glared—at her.

“One hallucination,” he said. “That’s all it would take. One hallucination that I’m back with her, and I could hurt you more than could ever be forgiven—”

“I don’t remember becoming a helpless little girl,” Marie said, her voice pointedly light.

“I’m stronger than you.”

“Enough stronger that you could do something irreversible to me?” Stein was silent, considering the question. “I doubt it,” Marie said. “Even if you were at your best. I _am_ a Deathscythe, you know.”

So Stein shifted his argument. “I’m trying to do this for your sake, Marie.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“This is going to be hell. You’re giving up any chance of happiness indefinitely.” The exasperation in his voice implied, _again_.

“I don’t care. What do you want for dinner?”

*

He called her optimistic and naïve and stupid. When she cheerfully treated all of those as compliments, he changed his tactic and became outright cold to her, answering her concerned questions curtly and avoiding her altogether when he could. There were times when even she felt like saying _fine, be that way!_ and avoiding him just as diligently.

But then she always remembered what his eyes looked like when he turned to her for protection from his own mind—the look that said he was drowning though there was no water in sight, that he was being hunted by horrors that no one else would believe were true. No matter how much he tried to claim that he didn’t need her, they both knew the truth.

*

Marie caught him cutting his chest open one night, and he got a Talking To as he stitched himself closed again. He offered no reason and wouldn’t look Marie in the eye for more than a moment. She felt like she was lecturing a misbehaving child.

The next night, she found herself getting oddly sleepy after drinking the tea that Stein had (kindly, she thought) made for her. She’d barely started working on her lesson plan by the time she fell asleep, and she woke the next morning tucked into her bed. Once again, Stein refused to meet her gaze.

He had tea ready for her again that evening. She glared at him. “Lord Death advises,” she said, “that I let you go ahead and cut yourself open because you _like_ doing it and it supposedly helps you.”

“You don’t seem enamored of the idea,” Stein said with a smirk that wasn’t directed at her.

“I like it better than the idea of you drugging me.”

So Stein got her a fresh cup, took a swig from the kettle to prove that the tea itself wasn’t drugged, and poured her a new cup of tea. She sipped at it while watching him over the rim.

“Are you angry?” he asked.

There _was_ something like anger crackling in Marie’s chest, but she dodged the question. “I’m worried about you.”

“Oh?” He smirked again. “There’s no need to be. I know what I’m doing. Besides, vivisecting _myself_ is much better than the available alternative… Don’t you think?”

There was a gleam deep his eyes trained unwaveringly on her, and she had to suppress a shiver. “That’s not funny.”

“Isn’t it? I said something similar before, and you seemed amused then.”

Back before she’d moved in, back when she’d been perfectly confident in her ability to protect Stein, back when she had been able to mistake that for a joke. Things were different now—Stein was different. The shell he wore over his darker self was thinner and nearly transparent, and Marie wasn’t sure it would hold. She was beginning to see, for the first time, what everyone else had always found so creepy about him.

She said, “Can you promise me one thing, Stein?” He gave her a blank look, so she continued, “Promise me you won’t try to operate on your brain. Okay? Anything else I’ll make myself overlook, but not there.”

Stein’s gaze shifted away from her, and he shook his head. “Can’t promise that.”

“Why not?” Marie grabbed his shoulder, trying to steal his attention back. He would only look at her out of the corners of his eyes. “Because you can’t control yourself?”

A moment passed before Stein sighed. “Yes.”

Marie’s grip on his shoulder tightened. She wanted to shake sense into him, shake him until he saw her point, but she couldn’t afford to be that childish and irrational with this man who spoke even of his own madness rationally. “Stein,” she said firmly, “you almost died once because you tried to operate on your own brain.”

“I know. I remember, I daresay considerably better than you do.” He smirked, and Marie glared rather than acknowledging the point. She only knew the rumors that had flown around the school.

“Stein—”

“I was seventeen, Marie. I hadn’t even been to medical school yet.”

“Oh, I see. Things are so much better now that you’ve taken ‘Cut your own head open 101’—”

“My technique is better now. I’m not going to hurt myself—”

“You’re _cutting yourself open_! If that’s not hurting yourself, then just what the hell is it?”

He stood, pushing his chair back with a clatter. “I can’t promise you anything. I’m going to bed.” And he stalked off to his bedroom. Marie looked down at the tea he’d made her and, in a fit of spiteful impulse, threw the teacup at Stein’s door. It shattered with a crash.

“Was that a piece of my glassware?” asked Stein’s voice, frosty from behind his closed door.

“It was my teacup.”

He said nothing and didn’t come out for dinner. He stayed shut up in the morning, too, and Marie didn’t see him before she had to leave for work. But he must have come out at some point during the night; there was money on the table and a note that said _for the teacup_.

*

“Miss Marie?”

Marie’s head shot up out of her arms and a polite smile formed on her face in response to Maka’s voice. “Can I help you?”

“I was just wondering if you were okay…”

“Yep, I’m fine. Just a little tired today.” How ironic: she’d learned that lie from Stein. Yes, she was tired, but more mentally than physically. She was tired of dealing with Stein, of being frustrated, of throwing her whole being into trying to help him and getting nowhere. She tried not to let Stein see, though it manifested anyway as shortness of temper. And now she’d been caught letting her guard down at school. “I’m fine, really.”

“Okay…” Maka didn’t look convinced, but she changed the subject anyway: “How’s Doctor Stein doing?”

Marie couldn’t even answer for a moment. How was she supposed to respond to that? Was she supposed to tell a reassuring lie? Or should she tell her student that Stein vivisected himself in the middle of the night? That his ability to fake kindness and normalcy was slipping as it took more and more effort just to control himself? That sometimes when Marie got home it took her a half-hour or more to convince Stein to respond to reality rather than whatever world he saw in his head?

Maka’s shoulders sunk at Marie’s hesitation, and a pained look appeared on her face. “Is it that bad?”

Marie gave her the most positive honest answer she could: “I don’t think he’s getting any worse.”

“But he’s not getting better, either?”

“Not that I can tell.”

Maka sighed. “I see. Well… tell him I said hi, I guess. And that I’m wishing him well. We’re all rooting for him.”

“I will.” Marie smiled again, this time for real—so it was a little tired, but it was warm. “Thank you for your concern, Maka. Doctor Stein really appreciates it, too.”

As Maka walked away, Marie considered what she’d said. _We’re all rooting for you._ She would tell Stein those words for sure, and hopefully today he’d be well enough to take them to heart: to realize that there were people who cared, who wanted him to get better.

*

Early one Saturday evening, when Marie had just begun to think about dinner, Stein came up to the couch where she was reading and sat down next to her, burying his face in her shoulder unabashedly. His wavelength shifted to match hers, and he gave a shuddering sigh. “I’m so tired of this.”

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders as he continued, “Help me. I’m sorry. Thank you. All the things I haven’t been saying, I’m still—”

 _I’m still thinking them._ Marie felt a lump form in her throat and looked away in the hope that Stein wouldn’t notice. But with their wavelengths so close anyway, there was no chance of that. Hesitantly, he touched the hand that clutched his shoulder.

“I think you’re doing things backwards,” he muttered. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to cry when I’m cruel to you and be relieved when I say nice things? It takes effort, you know.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize because I’m teasing you.” He sighed. “So, why are you crying?”

“I don’t know.” _Because I’m tired, too, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. Because I have no right to think that I’m tired compared to what you’re feeling. Because I’m scared that I’ve already lost you._ There were so many reasons—too many—and she couldn’t burden Stein with them. “I think it’s just… I’m trying so hard, but I don’t know if I’m doing you any good anymore.”

“You are,” he reassured her immediately.

Marie daubed at her eye. “Not enough, then.”

“There’s no one in the world who could do me ‘enough’ good. Don’t blame yourself for my insanity.”

“But I’m supposed… s’posed to be helping you. I want to save you, Stein, but…” Her voice caught in her throat, and her shoulders trembled. He’d come to her for comfort, but now she was complaining instead—it was backwards, it wasn’t what she wanted to do, but she couldn’t stop crying. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to no matter how hard I try.”

She felt Stein huddle a little closer, and he clasped her hand. “This is why I didn’t want you here,” he said. “You’ve done enough. You shouldn’t have this impossible task forced onto you, too.”

“Even if Lord Death hadn’t asked me, I would’ve—”

“You would have volunteered. I know.” He sounded frustrated, anguished. “You shouldn’t. I’m begging you, Marie, _get away from me_.”

But in response, she only held him more tightly and rested her cheek on the top of his head. Every day it became clearer what a miserable situation this was—but Stein had no choice but to endure it, and she wasn’t willing to let him do so alone. “I won’t leave you,” she said quietly. “I can’t.”


	9. Lust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter in deals with particularly dark themes, including destructive mind games and mentions of rape.

“I’m begging you, Marie, _get away from me_.”

He said it hopelessly, knowing she wouldn’t, completely unsurprised when she only tightened her embrace. She said, _I won’t leave you, I can’t_ , but another voice drew Stein’s attention.

“How _precious_.”

By now he knew how to suppress his shuddering, to give Marie no sign of what he heard.

“Poster children for ‘misery loves company.’ The stupid girl clearly doesn’t know what’s good for her…”

He felt something move inside his arm, traveling with an all-too-obvious slithering motion towards the hand that held Marie’s. It was a threat—Stein knew it was—but he was paralyzed by indecision, unwilling to pull away when Marie needed comfort but terrified, _terrified_ for her—

“Stein? Are you okay?”

She’d noticed the sudden pounding of his heart, the sweat on his palm. It gave him an opportunity to shift position, releasing her hand under the pretense of wiping his own on his pants and then sitting up a little straighter. He pretended not to hear Medusa’s chuckle reverberate in his head. “I’m fine.”

“Are you seeing something?”

He shook his head. _Hearing something_ , he answered in his mind, _and worse, it’s really there._

If he’d taken the time to think about it, if he’d been capable of logical thought when he made his escape, he would have known that one of Medusa’s snakes was still inside him. Instead it hadn’t been until he’d returned home, tried to get some sleep, and suddenly felt something twisting inside his stomach that he realized he wasn’t free yet. And then she’d started speaking to him—an IV drip of acid straight to the brain, dissolving every foothold his sanity found with a few simple words. She didn’t bother to hide her intentions.

 _You_ will _come back to me._

When she spoke, his broken mind filled in the rest of her presence easily. He could see her lurking in the corner of his vision or standing before him brazenly, unclothed and tempting; he could feel her draped around him, feel her soft breath on the tip of his ear. He hadn’t escaped her. Not even close.

So most nights found him in his one of his operating rooms, opening himself up to try to find the snake, remove it; but every time, it slithered away to some other part of his body, laughing at him. Marie caught him one night. He’d longed to explain to her, but he’d heard Medusa’s voice almost immediately: _Say anything and my snake will pay_ her _a visit, too._ So he’d said nothing, unable even to reassure her that he wouldn’t touch his brain, because if he’d said that then Medusa would nest there. Medusa had laughed at the excuses he offered and gloated when he’d retreated to his room. She knew that she held the power here.

*

“Addiction’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Doctor Stein? Keep up a set of behaviors long enough and the body grows used to them. Its chemical composition shifts. It starts to crave those behaviors. To _need_ them…”

Tonight the hallucination was lying by his side, trailing her fingers up and down his torso, every now and then dipping delicately lower.

“Don’t try to tell me that you don’t miss my touch.”

It would have been a blatant lie. He could feel himself getting hard, and when some traitorous part of his mind said _More_ , the hallucination obediently slid over him, smiling as Medusa continued to speak. “My weight on top of you, my nails digging into your throat… You fought back, but it was part of a game that we both knew you would never win, so we simply enjoyed the struggle…”

He was trying, in some part of his mind, to banish the hallucination to the other side of the room if nothing else, but the dominant part of him had heard Medusa’s words and resented the implication of his powerlessness, so he rolled on top of her and pressed her shoulders down into the mattress. Her eyes lit up, silently amused, and her hands wandered to the button of his pants—

“But,” Medusa said, “you’re alone now.”

—And the hallucination disappeared. Stein was propped up on his arms, glaring at his pillow. With a rough sigh, he lay down on his back again.

“Quite by your own choice, too,” Medusa’s voice mused. “You left me. Fled unthinkingly from the only person who has ever wanted you for exactly what you are, the only person willing to give you what you want.”

“Give?” The response slipped out of him. “When did you ever give me anything?” Neither of them had ever _given_ , had ever spared a thought for the other’s pleasure; the point had always been to take, to steal, to find satisfaction in the other’s suffering.

“I gave you the chance to vent your madness,” Medusa pointed out. “But perhaps that’s not what you had in mind? Do you prefer to take someone weaker, who has no chance of overcoming you? Who will fight you in true fear, only to lose? Hmph.” She laughed, but Stein could hear the danger and scorn in it. “Is that why you went back with her, Stein?”

A chill went down his spine at the implication. “No,” he said, and meant it fully. No. Not Marie. The idea was absurd. He would only hurt her, break her, and he had no desire to do that.

But Medusa continued, “No, you don’t think you’d like that? My poor, ignorant love. You have no idea, do you? How it feels to have someone so thoroughly in your power, how it feels to look into their eyes and see how much they hate and fear you? The hopelessness when they realize they have to submit… It’s _intoxicating_ …”

Stein had to stifle a shiver. There was something in him that wanted that, deep in the center of his being that he could only hide, not change. And Medusa knew because he’d told her everything and given her all the weapons she needed to destroy him with nothing more than words. She must have known how her suggestions were affecting him—known, certainly, that now he couldn’t shake the thought of such a victim. But not Marie. Never Marie. So instead he settled on Medusa, because it was acceptable to hurt her; he imagined her stripped naked and strapped unwillingly to an operating table in his lab. But she stopped struggling after mere seconds. She opened her golden eyes, and there was not fear but mocking amusement in their depths, daring him to continue.

The fantasy—the hallucination—was slipping out of his control, but he found he didn’t care as he reached out a shaking finger to trace the line of stitches he’d left between her breasts. In response, she shuddered and pulled against the restraints.

“Franken, _don’t_ —please—”

He leapt backwards. Marie—when had the hallucination changed? He stared into her face in confusion; now he saw the fear he had sought earlier, saw her trembling, saw her chest rise and fall with panicked breaths. He made himself take another step back. “No,” he said loudly, though he was fully hard now and shaking with desire, though his mind was already racing with the question of which part of her body he wanted to study most closely.

“No?” Medusa’s cool voice repeated, now at his shoulder. “No, you don’t want to take her? No, you’re not longing to see for yourself what it feels like to have that control? No, you don’t want to cut her open and see what it is that makes her soul so soft and mind-numbing? Liar.” Her whisper sent a wave of goosebumps up the back of his neck. “Look, you’re already holding your scalpel.”

He was, though he couldn’t remember making the decision to pick it up. He had to think about something else. Anything else. He cast his gaze around the room. Across Marie’s stomach ( _no, not there, dammit_ —but it was too late, he was trapped) was a pale line, the scar Medusa had inflicted on her in order to take him. It was nearly invisible thanks to Kim’s healing magic. The scar he’d given to Medusa had been proudly visible by comparison: a mark to claim her, to tie himself to her undeniably, permanently, _stupidly_ —and all he could think about was how he hadn’t been there to help Marie, to mark her in the same way. The scalpel felt heavy and delicate between his fingers.

“Stein,” Marie said, her voice shaking, “what are you thinking?”

He was a doctor. A surgeon. A genius, really. If he was careful, there would be no lasting damage. His art—the art he had studied and promised himself to—was one of healing, not harm. He wouldn’t hurt her. He would simply leave her a sign that he _could_ help her, that the next time, he would be the one to save her.

“ _Stein_ —”

He hesitated still; he knew that there was a glitch in his logic somewhere, but no matter how many times he retraced it he reached the same conclusion. The same urge. The same vibrant image of blood spilling over Marie’s white skin. Almost moving on its own, his hand brought the scalpel to Marie’s stomach.

“What are you doing?!” Her voice was high with panic, and Stein’s eyes flicked once to her face with what he hoped was a reassuring expression.

“It’s okay, Marie. This won’t take long.”

“Stein—Franken— _stop_ —”

“Quiet.” He clamped his left hand over her mouth. Her words and the tremor of her voice were making him hesitate—and at the same time they were dragging him forward, filling him with a trembling, dry-mouthed eagerness. He couldn’t take being torn in two like this. He sank the scalpel into her skin—it went in so _smoothly_ —and drew it across her faded scar.

Marie whimpered against his hand and pulled at the restraints again. “Hold _still_ ,” Stein said, aggravated, and hit her with a Soul Menace. Just a very small one, just to point out that her well-being was in his capable hands right now. Then he uncovered her mouth to reach for his sutures.

Except.

He didn’t want to stitch her back up.

Stein shuddered as he recognized the desire flowing from his core to the very tips of his fingers. He wanted to _take her apart_ , to separate every last muscle from bone, to drench himself in her blood and her screams of pain. For a moment he was back underground with pieces of Medusa’s body at his feet and her blood raining down, dripping down his skin, its heat the realest sensation he’d ever felt—he needed no more than this, needed nothing more than he needed this—he tore his eyes away from the (beautiful) red line on Marie’s stomach and made himself pull his scalpel back, too, panting as his head reeled.

“No,” he said again, his voice only a whisper this time. A soft chuckle filled his ears in reply. Medusa—he’d forgotten. She appeared on the opposite side of the table, smiling thinly.

“This is what you are, Stein,” she said. “This is what you want. This breathtaking destruction… No matter how much you try to stifle yourself, you will never be able to escape its appeal. This is what moves you…”

Keeping her eyes locked on Stein’s, she leaned over Marie, trailing first her finger and then her tongue through the wound he had made. Marie squirmed and shuddered, and Stein knew exactly why, knew the sting and the wrongness of it even as he remembered how good it felt. But he had no desire to be so delicate. What he wanted—what he _wanted_ —

“Take her,” Medusa encouraged as if reading his mind, wiping blood from the corner of her smile. “Destroy her. Show her exactly what you are. And if you are too much of a coward to rip her body apart like you really want to, then there is something else you can do to… _satisfy_ yourself.”

He would have understood what she meant even without the pause, without the dip in her voice. How could he not, even with his mind so muddled, when Marie was spread naked and helpless in front of him, and when Medusa kept _talking_ —

“Do you remember? You used to try so hard to carve a sound out of me… She’ll start screaming right away.”

He couldn’t catch his breath. It disgusted him, and yet at the same time some part of his mind was imagining eagerly, hungrily, what it would feel like to push into Marie, to violate her; for her struggles to only pull him deeper, for her screams and sobs to fill his ears as he— _no_ —Marie was watching him still, horrified, and he tried not to notice the lure of her expression and the frightened tears beginning to slip down her cheek.

“Stein?”

But when she spoke, her voice was not what he would have expected—the panic was gone from it, and there was no trace of tears.

“Are you all right?”

Another sound entered his ears—a high-pitched, uneven sound—laughter, his own—how long had he been making that accursed sound? His vision wavered and he remembered suddenly that he’d never left his bedroom and therefore hadn’t tied Marie down or cut her open, but as his senses realigned to the real world he found himself not on his bed but at the door, his hand on the doorknob. A chill went through him.

“Stein? Can you hear me?”

Belatedly, he took a deep breath to try to stifle the quiet giggles that were still escaping him. He was shaking so badly that he could hardly stand. He felt the doorknob turn and for a heart-stopping second thought he’d turned it himself without meaning to, but then Marie spoke again.

“I’m coming in, Stein.”

“No!” He leaned against the door that was beginning to open, forcing it shut. “Don’t come in.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I was hallucinating. You can’t come in.” He was still hard, still muddy-headed with arousal, still seeing (feeling) flashes of the hallucination even as he tried to fight it off.

“You don’t sound fine,” Marie said, but she didn’t try to open the door. “What’s wrong?”

“It was a bad one. I’m still recovering.”

“I can help you—”

“No!” It came out as a strangled yell.

“Why not? What aren’t you telling me?”

And he had to tell her, had to confess, to explain, because she’d break down his door if she thought she had to. “I want—wanted to—I kept seeing you—” But he couldn’t bring himself to admit it.

“You wanted to dissect me?” Marie guessed, her voice more calm than she could have possibly felt.

Stein’s mouth was dry. “Y-yes,” he said finally, and didn’t elaborate. He heard Medusa laugh at his cowardice.

“You still want to…?”

He saw himself slicing her scar open again. “Yes,” he said, his voice weaker. Marie was silent, and Stein knew she must have been hesitating. “Stay where you are,” he said, and went to his nightstand. The key to his room was in the back of the top drawer; he dug it out and slid it under the door.

“What…?”

“Lock me in,” Stein said.

There was silence for a moment, and then Marie said, “No. I don’t want to. I want to trust you.”

Stein clenched his fist in frustration. If he let her in, if she saw his eyes, if he grabbed her by the throat and threw her against the wall, then she’d see how serious he was—his knees went weak and he shuddered again. “You can’t. I’m past that point. There’s nothing left to trust.”

“I don’t believe that. I’ll never believe—”

“Dammit, Marie!” He struck the door with his fist, more forcefully than he’d intended, and heard her gasp. “Your stupid optimism is not going to fix this. I’m a danger to you. And if you won’t believe that, then lock me in because _I’m_ scared, because I’ll feel just a little bit better if there’s an extra defense between you and me. Don’t let me hurt you.”

Another pause. “You’ll feel better?” Marie asked, sounding small and defeated.

Only marginally, but if that was what it took—“Yes.”

Finally he heard the key turn in the lock. He tested the door, found it to be safely locked, and breathed a long sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to talk?”

“No. …It’s the middle of the night. Go to bed.”

“Then we’ll talk in the morning,” Marie said firmly. When Stein didn’t reply, her voice got softer again and she said, “Good night, Stein.”

“Good night.”

He felt her soul retreat, and as it did Medusa’s laugh rang in his head.

“Ah, what a show. That was lovely.”

“Fuck you,” he muttered, knowing that she’d only laugh again and hating her for it, hating himself for having nothing more effective to say.

“If only you would, darling.”

He crawled back into bed and wrapped himself in his covers as though they would be enough of a shield. She appeared again and sat down at the foot of the bed; he thought he felt it shift with her weight, thought he could smell iron and the firecracker scent of her magic.

“I don’t want you to misinterpret this, though, Doctor,” she continued. “Hate me all you want, but let’s keep the blame where it belongs. I can’t make you see things. My snake can provoke your madness, and if necessary, I can provide suggestions, but how often did I do that? Do you remember? Dare you try?”

She smiled, her eyes almost tender for a moment, and Stein stared back miserably. No, he didn’t dare try to recall her words, to pick apart her suggestions from the hallucinations that had sprung to his mind naturally. To do so would only call them back.

“I can’t read your mind, either. Not literally. I can’t see your delusions, so even my suggestions have to be guesses—but then again, you are _so_ predictable.”

“What do you want from me?” He asked in order to throw her off, to shake her loose, to stop the conversation from going so perfectly at her pace. But his next words were too realistic to be brave: “Do you want me to beg? Do you want me to tell you that you’ve won, that I have no chance, that you’ve broken me beyond repair? I’ll admit it,” he said, and his voice broke. “You win. Just leave me alone.”

She laughed as if genuinely amused. “How naïve, Doctor Stein. I would have thought you would know me better than that by now.”

And he did, really; he knew her well enough that he could have mouthed her next words as she spoke them:

“I want you to come back to me. I want you back in my arms and in my power and thinking only of me whenever you can manage to push a thought through the haze of your insanity. I want you, and I will not rest until I have you again.”

The hallucination stayed seated exactly where she was; she made no effort to lean over Stein and try to claim some of the power she wanted. She didn’t need to, when her eyes shone so confidently, so overwhelmingly.

“I’ll never go back to you,” Stein said, and his voice wavered and it wasn’t anywhere near as strong as he would have liked. But it was defiant. He was still capable of that much.

Scorn and anger slipped into the hallucination’s eyes. “Then,” Medusa said coolly, “we’ll keep having these little chats, won’t we?”


	10. Helplessness

And, without even really noticing, she had left Death City and found herself back at the laboratory she was calling home. For a moment, she could do no more than stare blankly as Lord Death’s words replayed again in her mind.

 _“Stein called me this morning. Marie… He says he was tempted to rape you last night.”_

 _All the blood had drained from her face. “He wouldn’t,” she said, and she hated how the words “Would he?” had slipped from her lips as Lord Death stared at her._

 _“He seems to think so. And considering the type of relationship he had with Medusa, it seems unwise to discount his fears entirely.” The solemnity in Lord Death’s voice was almost as unsettling as his words. “He’s insisting again that you be reassigned.  Marie… I can’t ask you to stay with him if he’s going to be an honest threat to you.”_

So he’d offered to call Stein back and act as a mediator between them, but Marie had shaken her head. No. That wasn’t how things were supposed to go. It was supposed to be just the two of them, so that Stein could be as vulnerable or as cruel as he needed to be, so that Marie (who already knew the worst of it) was the only one exposed.

What Lord Death had said could have been true. It was probably true, part of Marie thought, probably the explanation for last night that made everything fit together most neatly. She understood that, superficially at least, so shouldn’t she have been scared? Shouldn’t her skin have crawled at the mere thought of Stein? Shouldn’t she have been anywhere in the world other than standing in front of Patchwork Labs, trying to think of how to convince Stein to let her stay so that he wouldn’t wind up rotting in a cell beneath the Academy?

But even as Lord Death’s words echoed in her mind, she couldn’t get Stein’s voice from last night out of her head, either—how it had been hoarse with panic, shaking uncontrollably. How she’d known, the second she’d heard it, that he needed her now more than ever.

She took a deep breath and pulled the door open. “Stein? I’m home.”

What greeted her was an odd sight: her suitcases, furniture, and bedclothes packed into neat little piles in the living room, and Stein standing frozen halfway down the hallway.

“You’re early.”

“Neigus took my class for the rest of the day…”

He’d ceased to even look like a misbehaving child. Now he reminded Marie of a pet caught doing something it wasn’t supposed to. She half-expected him to slink away with his metaphorical tail between his legs, so she spoke again before he could: “What are you doing with my stuff?”

“I’m getting it ready for you to move out.”

“I’m not moving out.”

“Yes, you are.” His voice was slightly raised due to the distance between them, which he made no effort to lessen. His entire body was rigid, and Marie tried not to notice that his hands were clenched into fists when he shoved them into the pockets of his coat. “As soon as possible. Tonight. I’m sure you can stay with Sid and Neigus, or Spirit—”

“I am _not_ ,” Marie repeated, “moving out.”

His voice toneless, he said, “Marie, what I told Lord Death was true.”

“I know. I believe you. I know you wouldn’t lie or joke about that.”

His lips spread in a sick smirk even as his eyes begged _stop me help me get me out of here_. “Oh, then you _want_ me to—”

“Stein,” Marie interrupted him firmly, “you are _not_ going to try to scare me away. You are going to listen.”

Stein was obediently silent. His smirk disappeared, and his eyes were blank—not apologetic, and not really calm either. Just blank. Somehow that was every bit as creepy as his smile had been. Trying to ignore that thought, Marie spoke.

“Just because it happened last night doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again, right? Maybe you were just really tired, really vulnerable. It could be a one-time thing, like your attack during the Brew fight—”

Stein burst into sudden, sharp laughter. “Yes, maybe that’s it.”

“Why is that funny?” Marie asked. The look Stein was giving her was strange, almost demanding—but then it faded as he shuddered.

“It’s not. Never mind.” His expression was detached once more. “And if it’s _not_ a one-time thing? If I spend every night consumed with visions of stripping you naked, tying you to one of my operating tables, and—”

“ _Stop_ ,” Marie said loudly. Stein fell silent again. “You’re trying to scare me. I told you not to do that.”

Now Stein glowered. “I wouldn’t, if you showed the slightest sign that you understood the situation.”

“I understand that—” She’d raised her voice by accident. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she continued. “I understand that for whatever reason, you were hallucinating really badly last night, and if I leave you now, it’ll only get worse.”

“You left out the part where I was vivisecting and raping you in that ‘really bad’ hallucination.”

The sarcasm in his voice and the glint in his eyes were just cruel enough that Marie couldn’t stifle her shiver. “It doesn’t matter what you saw.”

“Like hell it doesn’t,” Stein snapped. “If it didn’t matter, you’d be able to look at me and say coolly what I tried to do to you last night. But instead you’re trying to avoid thinking about it, because if you took the time to let it sink in, fear and _common sense_ would tell you to get away from me.”

“And I still wouldn’t!” What he was saying was true, but she couldn’t let it be, couldn’t admit it. “I’m not going to leave you to fall prey to your own mind just because I showed up in one of your hallucinations! And besides, you didn’t ‘try to do’ _anything_ to me. You were still in your room, and the second I got near, you told me to lock you in. You’re still in control of yourself, Stein.”

“Do you know _where_ in my room I was?”

The tone in his voice told her she would not like the answer, so she didn’t even offer a guess.

“Standing at the door, with my hand on the doorknob. I made it from my bed to the door without even realizing I’d moved, and I was about to let myself out and go after you.” He gave an indistinct chuckle. “I am _not_ in control.”

She folded her arms tightly to stop her hands from shaking, or at least to keep Stein from seeing. Though he would probably guess. She was not qualified to outsmart him—not even close—but she had to outmaneuver him somehow because he was far too ready to sacrifice his sanity for her sake. “But you stopped there,” she said, thinking it a weak protest at first. But then she thought it through. “No… _I_ stopped you. When I got close to you, your hallucination cleared—didn’t it?”

Stein was silent, sullen. She was right, and now he was the one unwilling to admit something.

“You need me here. I can still help you.” And she almost smiled in relief—until Stein glared at her. He wasn’t beaten yet.

“What about when that stops being true? It’ll only take one night when you think your presence is enough or that I can be talked down, and all I’d have to do is break your arms or your legs or something so you can’t resist—”

“I’m not _weak_ , Stein!” She interrupted because she had to, because a light was slipping into his eyes that meant he was close to falling into a hallucination. “If you try to hurt me, I’ll defend myself!”

He snorted, the corners of his mouth stretching into an eerie smirk. “You can’t stop me. Not if I’m truly mad, not if I have the chance to get rid of the one person holding my madness back—”

“Don’t say that!” Marie shuddered. “ _She_ said something like that.”

Stein shrugged: his _I can’t help the way things are_ shrug. “Sorry. She’s always understood me better than anyone here could. Even better now.”

“If you’re sorry, stop smirking like that.”

Stein’s hand made its way out of his pocket and to his mouth, feeling his lips as if in surprise. He gave a feeble giggle. “I’m not doing it on purpose.” His voice shook, and then the giggle came back as he pulled pathetically at his lips. It didn’t work. His grin only grew wider and his laughter wilder, and his breath hitched every few seconds as if he wasn’t getting enough air.

“Stein, stop it,” Marie said, but it was impossible to tell if he heard her. She took a cautious step forward. “Franken—”

“Stay _back_ ,” he snarled—but at the same time, he lurched paradoxically forward, something terrifying and uncontrolled in his eyes. Marie’s stomach plunged; before she knew it she’d backed up and transformed her arm into a tonfa, holding it up defensively as her heart pounded.

But Stein didn’t advance any further. The second Marie had transformed, he’d drawn a long, shuddering gasp, the madness in his eyes giving way to horror. Now he was panting as they stared at each other. Marie changed her arm back, a flush creeping up the back of her neck. There was despair in Stein’s eyes, but there was a hint of triumph, too: _finally you see that you should be afraid of me._

“You need to leave.”

She shook her head slowly. “When you’re afraid of hurting me, it helps you fight your madness. I’m staying.”

“Marie, don’t.” His voice was weak. He didn’t even try to deny what she’d said. “This doesn’t have to be your problem.”

“You’d rather go to prison than accept my help?”

Suddenly his eyes opened wide, and he took a half-step backwards as if cornered. “I don’t need to go to prison. Why can’t I stay in my lab?”

“With who? You can’t be here alone, and if I’m not enough to help you, no one will be. You know that.”

“But—” He buried his face in his hands.

Marie watched him in confusion and concern. She’d expected misery or resignation, but Stein was shaking—genuinely scared. Which meant there was only one answer. “I’m staying,” she announced firmly, hoping that this time he’d give in—

He resisted still. “You can’t,” he said, his voice muffled by his hands.

“Then you’ll go to prison. That’s the only other option.” Stein shuddered and shook his head, so she continued. “But you don’t have to do that. I’ll stay with you for as long as you need me. However long it takes for you to heal. I want to help you, Stein. Please let me.”

Without another word, Stein turned and stalked down the hallway. Marie followed just in time to see him disappear into his room and shut the door. As she got close, he said, “Lock it.”

She sighed. What a pathetic excuse for a victory this was. “Does this mean I can stay?”

*

That was the last time she saw his face for weeks. He stayed in his room whenever she was home; she unlocked his door when she left for the Academy in the morning, and when she returned in the evening, he was already in his room, ready to be locked in again. She made him breakfast; on some days, he made her dinner. He answered her small talk even more curtly than before, when he answered at all. She spent her evenings trying to ignore how small she felt wandering Stein’s huge lab alone, trying not to spill the tears that felt like a constant pressure behind her eyes. She was exhausted, frustrated, desperate—a year ago, she would have said she was losing her mind, but living with Stein had taught her better than to joke about that.

One evening when she locked Stein into his room, he spoke wearily from the other side of the door. “Are you busy tonight?”

She hadn’t even started her lesson plan for the next day. “No, there’s nothing I need to do.”

“Could you just stay right there for a little while?”

“Of course.” She sat, pressing herself close to the door and hoping that Stein was doing the same so that he was as close to her soul as possible. She wondered if he was fighting a hallucination—until she heard what was unmistakably a dry, ragged sob. And then all the sorrow she’d been stifling hit her at once, and she buried her face in her arms. “Stein,” she said, her voice a pitiful croak between her tears, “please let me come in.”

“No,” came his reply, as she’d known it would. “…Please don’t cry.”

“You started it.”

Her lesson plan never got written. She stayed by his door all night, and she told herself that he did the same, accepting the only help she was still capable of giving him.


	11. Laughter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's quite a bit of gore in this chapter.

He pulled on his gloves and began to ready his tools, and she laughed.

“And here I was thinking you’d finally learned some sense.”

Stein bit down hard on his lip to hold back a laugh of his own. If he’d had any sense, he would have been in a cell beneath the Academy, sanity driven away by the darkness but at least powerless to hurt anyone. If he’d had sense, he would have given up. But instead he was still foolish, still egotistically jealous of his own soul. In prison, he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone, but he wouldn’t be _he_ anymore because the darkness would erase him and he would become overlapping screams of destruction and fear and the need to tear everything apart until it could be broken down no further, but with nothing to destroy or fear or take apart save himself, and if he still had control, any control at _all_ , then surely he didn’t need to do that yet, shouldn’t have to—

He realized, when a forceps slipped from his hand and clattered into the tray, how badly he was shaking, and he made himself stop that train of thought. No. No. He’d been over it hundreds of times already, so he knew it was desperate and self-serving and more optimistic than he had any right to be. But he had already made up his mind, so all that mattered was that in prison, he couldn’t do _this_.

“How long has it been? You were so good about it, so _diligent_ about not cutting yourself open for a while,” Medusa said, coy and smug. Stein watched her slender fingers glide along the edge of his tray. “But in the end, you can’t fight it, can you? Poor thing. I keep telling you, Marie would make the perfect—”

“Save it,” he snapped, and was surprised when she didn’t speak over him. Usually she took an inexhaustible pleasure in provoking _that_ kind of hallucination, the kind that made him too sick and shamed to even answer Marie’s concerned chatter.

Instead, this time, she said, “Then come back, Stein. I’ll let you inside of me as long as I get a turn with you.”

In her voice, he could hear her smiling at what might as well have been a private joke between the two of them: that her double entendre didn’t even need to be a double entendre to be attractive. Not for them. Her fingers closed gently around one of his scalpels, and for a moment his mind went blank and he forgot why insanity was worth fighting against. Yes, she was a liar, a monster, mad with the desire to destroy, but how could he condemn her for that when his own desire to tear, to gouge, to ruin, was every bit as strong? Was it wrong for them to prey on each other? Maybe the world would get lucky and they would destroy each other. Or maybe it was better for the world if they turned their lusts outward and culled inaction and weakness and whatever else they could get their hands on—

“Admit it, Doctor Stein. You belong with me.”

—But Stein’s muscles jerked and suddenly his mind was back on the right track. For a moment, he’d thought she was going to say _You belong to me_ , and with a flare of resentment he remembered the cold superiority with which she used to hold him, her arms an impassive cage. It wasn’t the right reason, but it was enough. He reached for the scalpel she was holding, and the hallucination dissolved when he didn’t feel her skin.

She gave a theatrical sigh. “If you _insist_ … “

The snake was in his stomach. He had taught himself to sense it, to track its movements by the feeling of her magic—a feeling with which he was intimately familiar. So he knew when it uncoiled itself and began to move, and he knew when it suddenly stopped. Hearing Medusa’s soft gasp, he allowed himself the tiniest of smirks.

“That’s impossible,” she protested, perhaps unaware that Stein could hear her. The snake writhed again, looking for another route of escape, but it found none. He’d left none. Taking a deep breath to prepare himself, he made an incision across his stomach. The pain cleared his head like drawing back a curtain and focused him on what he needed to do.

“That’s _impossible_ ,” Medusa repeated, sounding almost petulant now. “You can’t do that alone!”

Soul Sutures—well, not quite. It was a much simpler, much less precise technique based on a similar principle. He’d coated his own stomach with his wavelength. It wasn’t a strong barrier—nowhere near what he would have been able to manage with Spirit’s or even Marie’s help, and he certainly wouldn’t have been able to do this on anyone but himself—but it was enough to stop one of Medusa’s snakes from roaming through his body at will, as long as he focused. And he needed to focus, not on the pain or the beauty of the blood that was starting to leak out of him, but on his task. On the knowledge of what he needed to do. On the thought of excising Medusa from himself, and not yet on what a victory it would be but on the action itself. He moved to put the scalpel down, but—

“Tell me something, Stein,” Medusa demanded. Suddenly she appeared again, her eyes burning and her hand firmly wrapped around his own, trying to direct the blade. He heard someone make a whimper of fear and realized belatedly that the sound had come from his own throat. His hand trembled with the effort of not moving the scalpel according to her will.

“Do you honestly think this will be enough?” she asked. “What do you think will happen to your mind without the structure of my control? It won’t get any better. Under all your play-acting and all your effort, you lack the instinct for the order you claim devotion to. You know this. You’ve _always_ known that the only way to keep yourself from hurting others is to remove yourself from the equation entirely.”

Stein’s heart was pounding, and he tried to remember how to breathe.

“If Marie came in and found you like this…” Medusa said, lingering on each word, “how long do you think you’d resist before attacking her? You’re _broken_ , Stein; you’re out of control, and denying that does no good for _anyone_. You need to give up.”

Stein choked on—what? Laughter, a noise of terror, he couldn’t tell because his thoughts were all bleeding into each other, fear and bloodlust and shame. He couldn’t feel Medusa’s touch any longer, but his knuckles were aching with the urge to cut deeper, to dig into his body and take out all his flaws, even if that meant—his hand opened and dropped the scalpel to the floor, and his mouth opened and spit out words from some inaccessible part of him, sane and stupid—

“Desperate, jealous _bitch_ —Don’t you have more _dignity_ than to play ‘if I can’t have you, no one c—’ kkh—”

He had to stop because of the pain and because it reminded him that there were other things for him to focus on right now. Panting, he reached for his forceps but couldn’t get his fingers to grasp them because he wanted to sink his fingers into the warm flesh of his own gut, and he didn’t have the time to fight the urge so he had to just hope it wouldn’t kill him. He gritted his teeth and pushed his way in; his vision went red with pain and it took every ounce of concentration in him not to relax his wavelength. Just a minute longer. That was all. After that, either Medusa would be gone or the thing tearing at his mind would have its way at last and he would no longer have to wear himself out fighting it. His breath caught then, in terror and pain and at how nice his blood-soaked fingers felt slipping against each other like this—and he reminded himself again to focus, focus, because—because _there it was_. He pinched the wiry creature between his fingers and it writhed desperately but he wasn’t about to be distracted by struggles as pitiful as that. There was a wet sound as he pulled his hand free. Then he forced the snake into a test tube, corked it in, and breathed a long, tired sigh. He was shuddering and his stomach was throbbing, but his thoughts began to settle again.

It would be wiser to just destroy the snake—he knew that, especially since he could feel laughter rising in his throat like bile—but dammit, he deserved a chance to gloat. With one hand pressed to his wound, he drove the pain from his mind in order to hold the test tube at eye level and give it a light, mocking shake.

“You lose, Medusa,” he said, a wicked smile spreading across his face. “Your hold on me is gone.”

The snake was coiled at the bottom of the test tube, barely moving. Its arrow head was looking at him through smears of blood, and Stein found himself wondering what expression Medusa wore as she watched him. Bitterness? Grudging acknowledgement? Or the fiery hatred he’d only seen once or twice, furor that he had the gall to oppose her and win?

“It never occurred to you that I had a chance, did it? That I’d have the strength, the mental composure to excise you from myself? You thought it was only a matter of time before I returned to you and let you put my broken mind back together as you saw fit.” And he gave a sharp laugh—but he had to cut himself off abruptly because he could feel more laughter trying to boil over after it. There was a fit coming for him; there was no denying this and he was past the point of resisting it, but he could not let Medusa see. Catching his breath in a way he hoped wasn’t too obvious, he smirked at the snake. “I’ll never go back to you,” he said, not gloating this time but simply telling the truth. He’d somehow made it through the worst. There was nothing in the world, now, that could drag him back to her.

“Good-bye, Medusa.” He wrapped his hand around the test tube and hit it with a Soul Menace that was certainly overkill—but with Medusa, one could never be too careful. And then he shuddered as madness rolled over him, and he laughed, laughed from the bottom of his heart, euphoria filling every last cell of his body, until Marie burst in and held his shoulders tightly and pulled him back and pointed out that he’d cut his stomach open and should really stitch it back up, and even then with her sitting there he kept laughing because finally, at long last, he’d won.

*

Far away, Medusa stared into her now-empty crystal ball and gave a weak chuckle—maybe out of admiration, or disbelief, or maybe to camouflage what would have sounded like a sob otherwise—and she hoped that the stupid bastard bled to death before he pulled himself together again.

*

When Marie’s wavelength finally cleared his mind, the first thing Stein said to her was, “Get away from me.” His voice was cold and toneless and Marie wasn’t sure what he was thinking, so she released her vice-grip on his shoulders and took a few cautious steps backwards. For a long moment, Stein did nothing; then he gave a sigh and reached a shaking hand towards the bottle of iodine on his nightstand, and he began cleaning himself.

“I don’t remember giving you permission to come in.”

“Permission? Exactly who is the guard and who is the prisoner here?” Marie asked lightly, a bit awkwardly. And then, her tone more serious, “I did my best, you know. I hesitated, and I did come in ready to defend myself, but I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing. You sounded…”

“Insane?” he prompted.

Marie nodded reluctantly.

“Just because I didn’t hurt you this time doesn’t mean it wasn’t stupid.”

“I know.”

“Don’t do it again.”

But he didn’t chase her out, so she stayed, hovering nearby and watching him put himself back together. Gaping, self-inflicted stomach wound aside, he looked better than she’d expected. Not emaciated. Not scraggly and about to fall apart. Not, for the moment at least, too insane.

“Are you okay now?” she ventured as he tugged the last of the stitches tight and peeled off the rubber gloves.

In response, he gave a lean grin and indicated a spot on his bedspread. Among all the blood, there were shards of glass and a burnt-looking spot.

“What is that?”

His grin stretched further. “Until a few minutes ago, it _was_ a snake.”

Her mouth falling open, she looked at the burnt spot, and back at him, and—“You’re kidding,” which wasn’t what she meant; she meant shock and disbelief and faint irritation at herself for having no idea. “It… _she_ … was inside of you?”

He nodded.

“This whole time?”

Nodded again.

Before she knew it, she’d raised her hand as if to slap him. “Why didn’t you—”

“Please don’t hit me right now. I just lost a lot of blood.”

She could see that his eyes were bleary, so she lowered her hand again and didn’t comment that it was his own fault he’d lost that blood. Besides, what was there to blame when he’d lost it in the process of getting the witch out of him? And that meant that every time he’d vivisected himself since getting home… She wouldn’t have stopped him, if she’d known. She could have helped him, could have sent her electricity through him and killed the snake—

“Why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

“She would have used it to hurt you, too.”

“…Killed me, you mean.”

“Eventually.” His mouth stretched into a pained smile. “But it would be slow.”

Marie shivered at the thought, and Stein continued shakily, “I don’t think you’re in danger now. I think she has other priorities or she would have come to get me long ago. But… please… avoid being alone unnecessarily.”

“All right. Still…” she said quietly. “I wish you’d said _something_.”

Stein shuddered and shook his head. “I couldn’t. I know what she’s capable of, Marie, what she _likes_ to—”

But he must have realized, as she approached, that it had been an idle thought rather than a practical one, because he fell silent and let her sit down next to him. He did pull away, though, when she tried to embrace his shoulders.

“Stein…”

“Not yet,” he mumbled.

Her heart ached for him. “Stop suffering alone,” she pleaded.

“Sorry. Force of habit, I guess.”

“It’s a bad one. You should fix it.”

“Mm.” He was noncommittal, patient with her attentions if not altogether appreciative. She sat there with him, and in a few minutes he relaxed and leaned carefully against her; and she didn’t mind the blood on her pajamas and smearing into her skin because it meant he was learning to trust himself again.


	12. Epilogue: Devil's Advocate

_Some time later_

This had been a bad idea. Stein shut the anatomy textbook and tried to clear his mind of thoughts of cutting something—anything—open. There was nothing for him to dissect, anyway. Marie had “freed” all of his mice long ago, perhaps wisely, and now was not the time to go cutting himself up. But he wanted to, not destructively but just to relieve this itch, to answer the images of blood and pulsing organs that he’d accidentally summoned. He covered his face with his hand and sighed.

“Why the hell am I here?”

A soft chuckle. “Don’t ask _me_ that.”

He stood and trudged to the washroom to splash some cold water on his face. She followed at a respectable distance, walked unhindered through the door that he closed behind him, and remained silent as he filled the sink and scrubbed his face. The water did nothing to dispel her presence, and he could feel her golden eyes trained on his back.

His hallucinations of her hadn’t stopped—but he hadn’t really expected them to. Not after everything she’d done to him, been to him; not after the undeniable influence she’d had on his mind. So instead of trying to fight them, he’d robbed them of their power. He’d trained them to stay back and stay clothed. They were not as cruel as the real thing, now. Now they were playfully argumentative, which made them a decent way to tug on his chains every now and then and make sure they still held strong.

In the mirror, he saw her smile patronizingly. “Anxious about tomorrow?”

He had a meeting scheduled with Lord Death and Marie to discuss whether or not he was ready for the anklet to come off. And though he would still be under house arrest, though he’d tried to tell himself that he didn’t really care, he’d grown agitated thinking about it. He’d been reading in the hope that it would distract and calm him. Success on the first count; not so much on the second.

“Are you going to tell them you still talk to me?” Medusa asked. She looked faintly smug, and Stein was expressionless as he watched her through the mirror.

“It’s not something I should hide.”

“Even though it’ll hurt your chances?”

This was meant to be an honest assessment. If his instinct was to hide the fact that he argued with a hallucination that had Medusa’s face, that was nothing more than a sign that Lord Death needed to know.

So she tried a different angle: “Marie won’t like it.”

He smiled wryly and turned to face her properly, half-sitting on the sink edge. “No, she won’t. She’ll want to know why she’s not enough. She’s here to help me, after all.” He sighed and shook his head. “I _can’t_ have these conversations with her.” She would struggle to keep up and would never understand that the point was to talk through these borderline thoughts, not to talk him out of them.

“She’ll never be enough, you know. You need someone who understands who you are—what you want.”

“Someone like you, is what you’re trying to say?” Stein asked as Medusa got closer than he probably should have let her. She placed a gentle hand on his cheek and smiled.

“Am I wrong?”

He stared at her. “My memory is nowhere near selective enough to let me fall for that.”

“No? What a pity.” There was pained sympathy in her eyes, in her voice. Her fingernails raked his skin ever-so-slightly, and it took a stupid amount of self-control not to tilt his head towards her touch. For a moment, he had a hard time breathing.

“Back off,” he said finally, firmly. A bit too loudly.

So she reappeared where she’d begun, leaning on the far wall and holding her hands up in faux innocence. He couldn’t pull away from her gaze, and he _needed_ to, so he turned back to the sink to splash his face again.

“That didn’t work the first time. What makes you think it will do any good now?”

Stein sighed, leaning on the sink. He couldn’t let himself get distracted like this. “…What was the original question?”

“Why the hell you’re here,” Medusa said, “‘here’ presumably meaning under Death’s thumb. I don’t believe you’d found an answer yet.”

She met his eyes in the mirror, smirking. He gave a lean smile in return. “You’re wrong. I’ve always known the answer to that question.” It was always there. Sometimes he tried to resist it, and in his worst moods it didn’t make as much sense as it should, but it was always present.

Medusa’s smirk slipped away, and she raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Oh? Enlighten me.” The tone of her voice added, _convince me_. But she was a hallucination. It was his own mind rattling these chains, and it was nothing new.

Stein’s fingers found the old scar at the base of his skull. It was one of his roughest, and probably his least proud. “You nearly didn’t have a chance to meet me at all, you know. I almost died when I was seventeen.”

“Is this relevant?” She folded her arms and tilted her head patronizingly. “Telling _me_ boring childhood stories is one thing, but reminiscing to your own mind? I didn’t think you were so desperate for attention.”

“You’re the one who asked. Are you going to shut up and listen or not?” She was silent, so he continued. “This was back when I was trying and failing to get control of myself. I could fight my own madness when I was conscious, for the most part, but every night I had vivid dreams about dissecting the corpses of people I called friends in my waking life.” Stein stared at the mirror, seeing neither himself nor Medusa but the fragments of the dreams that he still remembered. Spirit. Sid. Marie, once in a while. And sometimes even Lord Death himself, dead by Stein’s hand and stretched out on the table, with anatomy like nothing Stein had ever seen. He shuddered. It was treason to remember this.

“Poor Stein,” Medusa said. “Scared of a few little dreams.”

“If I’d been scared, it wouldn’t have been such a problem.” He gave a sick smile. “I would wake up buzzing, _needing_ to dismember something. I gave in every time—got rid of my new apartment’s rat problem in a week—until I realized I was feeling and obeying a compulsion to kill. …That spooked me just a bit.” He hadn’t slept for three nights straight after that realization, and when sleep had finally forced itself upon him, the dream he’d had—

“So you turned your knife on yourself instead of others for once?”

“Not like that. I extracted a piece of my brain stem so I couldn’t enter REM sleep anymore. …It wasn’t a wise move by any criteria. Considering my lack of experience, it’s a miracle that I only _almost_ died—I would have, if Spirit hadn’t been sent to check up on my truancy. He found me passed out from blood loss, and ten days later I got a visit from Lord Death in the infirmary.” He swallowed. “…This next part, I didn’t tell Medusa.”

She’d asked—multiple times, if his memory could be trusted—but he’d never been able to answer. Every time, the slightest thought of the conversation had sent his already-crazed mind spiraling through contradictory, unsolvable emotions. Surrendering his freedom had saved him and trapped him. It had guaranteed his permanent frustration even as it gave him relief.

“We talked. I said… all sorts of things. I couldn’t figure out whether I hated myself or him. And I was afraid to tell him that, but he wasn’t angry. He just let me talk, and when I stopped ranting he asked me what I wanted.”

“Ha.”

Stein smiled in wry agreement; he’d scoffed at Lord Death, too. “I told him that he couldn’t offer me that choice. That I was incapable of making a correct decision. Care to take a guess what he said to that?”

Medusa rolled her eyes. “I’m _your_ hallucination. I know just as well as you do what he said.”

“Humor me. Answer me like she would.”

Another roll of the eyes, a glance to the side. “I assume that Death ordered you to follow him then, and you agreed because you didn’t know what else to do with yourself.”

“Not at all.” He too had expected for Lord Death to demand obeisance, and he’d readied himself to be forced into a shame-faced, bristling bow, but Death had known that to rob him of choice would only foster resentment. “He promised to always let me choose which side I wanted to be on. To kill me, yes, if I was a threat to order, but to never take away the freedom of that choice.”

“Heartwarming.” Then her gaze focused coldly on him. “But tell me… has he kept that promise? Are you still free to make whatever choice you want? You’re under house arrest now. And remember, Marie would have stolen you back from me if you hadn’t gone with her willingly. She admitted that.”

Stein’s stomach twisted, but he answered levelly, “House arrest and most of the details of it were my idea, and Lord Death is the one who’s so eager to get this anklet off me now. As for when I left you… _You_ stole me in the first place, and seriously compromised my ability to make rational decisions. I don’t get to make life-changing decisions when I’m crazy. That only makes sense.”

Medusa’s eyes were contemptuous and painful. “You do realize, of course, what a pitiful rationalization that is?”

Stein only looked at her in the mirror again, silently.

“You’re fine with that?”

If he were fine with it, she wouldn’t be here. But what he said was, “He’s the better option. That he allows me choice is undeniable. But you, Medusa… you don’t seem to think I deserve that. If I were stupid enough to go back to you now, you’d tear the ability to make decisions out of me, break me until rational thought isn’t even a distant memory. Who the hell would choose that? Sanity’s a part of who I am, too, you know.”

“He says to a hallucination.” Medusa looked away, sulking.

“I didn’t say it was a dominant part.”

She looked at him again, her mouth twisted in bitter frustration. “Fine. For now, I’ll leave you to your ‘choice’ and your mental slavery, since you’ve convinced yourself that’s what you want.” At the last second, faint pity appeared in her eyes. “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Medusa,” Stein muttered as the hallucination cleared. He pulled the plug out of the sink and watched the water swirl away. The chains held. He was here. He would never go to Medusa. “I’m looking forward to the day I forget your face.”

 _Liar_ , said the ghost of her voice in his mind.

But in response, Stein let a grin spread across his face. “It’s not a lie,” he said, completely and wonderfully honest. “Not entirely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with these last two chapters--they are much better now. Also, thanks for reading!


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